Captain Turner and the Organ
by Rokhal
Summary: The Flying Dutchman never gets a dull moment: storms, Calypso, demon-fish, dead people, live people, and a captain who barely rates "able seaman" and can't stop tinkering with expensive musical instruments.
1. Captain Turner and the Organ

Disney, please consider this work to be free advertising. As if you need it.

Poor Will, exiled to the Great Beyond, doing a job he's not quite trained for, living with people he doesn't quite like. At least the Great Beyond isn't all boring. A little too un-boring, come to think of it, what with tetchy goddesses and storms and giant fish . . .

* * *

**Captain Turner and the Organ**

They missed the music. 

That impossible beast, the pipes that stretched through three decks' height, all gleaming brass, nickel, and mahogany now that it was no longer more seamount than instrument, still brooded below, the lungs and throats of a platoon of avenging angels waiting to groan, or trumpet, or rail, or sigh and whisper wistfully of lost years, but they waited long and silent, for their player was dead.

The pipes gave a sudden squawk, startling the men reefing the main topgallant.

Woken and working, but miserably so, the organ shrieked out a long whistle like an angry hummingbird, before slowly dropping, step by step, note by note in a grating twelve-note scale, down the two-hundred-odd keys all the way to the quaking bass pipes as wide as a man's torso, pipes that whales mistook for the lowest grunts of their kind. The men on the mainmast gritted their teeth as the spar vibrated under their arms. Miles away, a school of herring shimmered and fled.

"Somebody give us a shanty," someone called.

They hardly recognized each-other, since the ship had been reborn, and them with it. This man had thin whiskers, and had taken to calling himself Gilbert Coombs. The wind gusted, flaring the sail as they bound it to the spar, but the men on deck heard and took up the cry.

"A shanty!"

"Joe give us a song?"

"For God's sake, get the demmed squealin' outa me ear-holes!"

The men groused back and forth, until finally they began to wonder, "Does no-one know any?"

Captain Jones had not taken kindly to singing.

They stared around at each-other, until one of the newer crew remembered an old tune. A very old tune, from long before he'd even seen the sea.

He sang threadily, his voice hesitant and chalk-soft, eyes screwed shut in concentration.

"Hush ye, my bairnie  
Bonny wee dearie  
Sleep! come and close the een  
heavy and wearie  
Closed are the wearie een..."

"No, ya loony! Sing sommat ta work to!" Gilbert bellowed.

The singer trailed off, seeing the others stare at him in annoyance. "It's all I've got."

The organ roared, sounding a hundred notes at once, nearly blasting the men on the topgallant from their perches. The noise drove on, huge and steady and utterly tuneless, featureless, ceaseless. Exasperated, Gilbert gaped at his fellows. "What's Cap'n doin, takin a nap on the bloody keys?"

Captain Turner was not lying on the keys. He had instead set a spare plank over the keyboard and weighted it with sand bags, emptying every gasp of wind from the bellows into the pipes. The din in the organ room was incredible. He had one arm wrapped around his head to cover his ears, while with the other he patted down his pockets and turned the room over for something to stuff in them. There was a hymnal inside the music bench. He ripped the front page out and wadded it into earplugs, then went below for a ladder. A ladder, a marlinespike, a hammer, a pot of oil, perhaps…

Meanwhile, the organ railed, the air whooshing from the tops of the pipes like a giant's breath, a giant being kicked again and again in the chest by a giant ox.

Life under Jones had been hell, but after a year or so without him, the crew had found themselves slightly nostalgic. "Old Davy was a scary cuss," one of the men might say, "but he only had two kinds of _moods—_sulky and ornery. And he let you know what's what." Turner had moods, which he tried, and for the most part, failed, to keep firmly under his bandana, cycling through hope and resolve and impatience and worry and bewilderment and existential anguish. He was confusing. Despair went a long way in making a man predictable, and Turner did not have despair.

He also entirely lacked Captain Jones' sense of grandeur, at best an embarrassment and at worst obstructive. In a hard storm above water, with the rain whipping into their eyes and sheeting down thick enough to hide the topsails, or in dense murk below when they sailed blind through blizzards of mud relying only on their captain's untrained sea sense to keep them from striking bottom, it was hard to pick him out from the sailors because he didn't wear a hat.

The crew had lost pride.

Under Jones, they had been less than men and more than men—they lived with horrors, they themselves were horrors, and nothing short of the Captain himself could ever cow or horrify them. Now they were a raggle-taggle of refugees from death, scrapped together from different decades, portless, unpaid, without a proper work shanty among the score of them. Before, they had heaved-ho to the despairing strains of the pipe organ, the soul's cry of the captain thrumming through the ship in magnificent agony. It was sad, dreadfully so, but its voice made sadness sweet, and it was impossible, too: what ship but the Flying Dutchman could spare two decks' height to such extravagance? What other ship was its own cathedral of damnation?

Now they had Will Turner poking around the thing—literally poking it, as though it surprised him when it made noise.

Thirty minutes later, they guessed, the organ stopped screaming.

* * *

Chapter 1 of a completed story. Man, this was in the works a long time. At first, it was just going to be about what Will does to the organ. 

If anything is confusing, this is probably because I like to assume all readers have psychic powers and can decipher my subtlest intentions from vague references alone. So it's probably my fault, not yours, and it would be wonderful of you to tell me when something doesn't make sense.


	2. The Perils of the Pipes

**The Perils of the Pipes**

Jimmylegs was on storm watch in the crow's nest. One of Turner's first acts as captain was to demote him from bosun; his second was to jump into a brawl that had sprung up the next day and tear the rest of the crew off the poor man. No-one liked Jimmylegs. Idealistically, Turner had decreed that he would not allow abuse of any kind aboard his ship, and cynically, had done his best to keep Jimmylegs where no one could get at him.

Maccus, still the able first mate, let Jimmylegs yell himself hoarse from the top of the mast before he finally looked up to acknowledge he'd heard him, then hopped down the aft hatch to find the captain.

* * *

His crew would never have guessed it, but Will had always been fascinated by pipe organs. He'd rarely seen them: one in England and none in Port Royal. The gleaming flutes entranced him, the keyboard taunted him with its simple operation and hidden guts. This was the closest he'd ever come to one. 

When Maccus found him, Captain Turner was half inside the console under the keyboard. Miniature boards were strewn around the foot-pedals; as he watched, his captain pried off a slat with a marlinespike and stuck his fingers into the gap. Still engrossed in the organ's innards, Turner reached out of the hole he had made, felt around the keyboard, and punched some keys. To Maccus' alarm, not a whistle came out, but Turner had evidently felt something from inside the little box, because he pried another board off, reached behind him for a candle, and fluttered the key rapidly, peering up into the organ's underside and watching by the light.

Maccus noticed that several of the keys, with their lever and weight mechanisms in various stages of dissection, lay near the music bench on the mahogany panel that had been the facing for the bottom of the console. A handful of small pipes and two of the larger rolled about the deck, clanging and tinkling.

"Cap'n," he began, and Captain Turner startled and pulled his head out of the organ, eyes agape. Turner habitually seemed a bit dumbstruck. Only when surrounded by horrors of the deep, or recently back from the dead, had he looked truly professional to Maccus.

"Mr. Maccus, what word?" the captain asked, hauling himself upright by the keyboard so as not to step on any of the organ's parts. Thankfully, he usually sounded professional.

"Squall spotted off the bow, Captain," he replied slowly. "A point or so to starboard."

"What do you advise?"

Maccus planned his reply. A vague suggestion could keep him below decks half an hour, explaining the sail to his green captain; a detailed one might cut the time to a few minutes. "Reef the topsails, set the storm jib, prepare to dive shallow should she press us too hard." 'She' being the churlish and unpredictable lady who sent storms.

Turner, leaning against the console, gazed at the opposite wall for a moment. "If we dive, the current will drag us rather sideways."

Maccus shrugged.

"Can we reach across the wind and skirt around?"

"It's a fair distance yet…"

"I'll take a look, then," said Turner, setting his marlinespike and candle on the music shelf, and he strode past Maccus for the doorway, oblivious to the maelstrom in his first mate's head.

"Captain, if I may?"

"Yes, Mr. Maccus?" replied the captain, pausing on one foot.

"What the devil did you do to the organ?" Maccus burst out, consternation and outrage cracking in his throat.

"Oh," said Turner. Maccus mentally kicked himself and took a step backward, bowing his head as though to conceal his indiscretion. Under Jones, he could never have made such a mistake. Terror did wonders for command protocol.

Turner rubbed the back of his neck, surveying the wreckage, thankfully oblivious to Maccus' reddened face. "I traced the airflow," he announced, turning back to the organ and grabbing the candle again. Maccus followed, bewildered. His captain was in another mood, unlike most he'd seen before—he was cheerful?

Turner stuck the candle up under the keyboard, carelessly letting the flame fan soot onto the woodwork above it as he angled the taper to show the airspaces behind. "You see those brass weights," Turner said, pointing with the marlinespike to somewhere deep within the console, his voice unusually light and tripping. "There's a bellows somewhere back there, driven by an Archimedes screw mounted outside the hull. The weights sit on a lid to a box; they press the air from the bellows and keep the lid from floating too high on its wind. The pressed air flows up into these small cells under the pipes, and then the key," and here he grabbed a key on the edge of a gaping hole he'd made in the keyboard, "draws back a slip of wood by a lever and a strip of hide."

He tapped the key to demonstrate, then with a jiggle and a soft but piercing crunching noise, popped it out and dropped it in Maccus' frozen palm: a heavy ivory block with its fragile mechanism stretching back over his fingers like the frail joints of a viperfish—one of those charming little lighted creatures the crew met on the deepest dives that would snatch bits of chum from a sailor's hand.

Poor key.

* * *

Jones had preferred they skewer the viperfish.

* * *

One of the things I love about Will Turner is how he can't resist touching fragile objects: even when he was backstabbing with the grownups in Beckett's cabin, he was still fooling around with that brass thingy on that globe. The sign of an active and curious mind, says I. Maybe not the most cunning, but not naturally dumb. 


	3. A Longstanding Habit

**A Longstanding Habit  
**

The next day, Maccus discovered his men crowded unhappily about the bilge hatch, some crawling on the bottom with candles and the rest peering down through the opening or the slits in the deck.

They'd come upon a seventy-four gunner, gutted by fire and kept afloat by the wood's buoyancy alone. Several hundred men had died on that ship, and now, even as Maccus looked into the bilge, half a crew of French navy men were sitting blank-eyed and bewildered in their little lighted boats on the other side of the sea.

After this embarrassment by the English, France would undoubtedly send another ten score to replace them, and redouble its naval posturing. The carnage would repeat itself.

After checking for survivors—none, the rest taken prisoner on the winning vessel—and casting about the wreckage for something homely to take to their berths, like a silver flask or some spare worming cord to tie buttons in, someone returning had happened to glance into the Dutchman's bilge, and his consternation had spread through the crew like a fright through a school of fish. Captain Turner, oblivious, was still puttering around the _Courageux_, and while not yet holding them up in their duties, had a bounce in his step that meant that whatever grand idea he had in his head might drive him on for the rest of the day.

"Clear out, ya clods," Maccus barked. "Mind the grapples or sommat. What's all this?"

The men lingered in the cramped space, though they did stand and squeeze against each-other to let the first mate through. Something silvery and slime-stained wavered up from the bilge, a long, long cylinder of polished metal stretching weakly up into the hold like a consumptive's arm up from the deathbed, until at its base appeared a wedge notch and Penrod's head and arms, holding the thing upright. Thick as a knee, covered in bilge muck, tapering to a cone point where it once had rested over the wind chest Captain Turner had shown the Mate so innocently.

Maccus licked his lips, knowing that when he spoke, he would sound hoarse and drained. "How many?"

In answer, Penrod emerged from the bilge, sagging from his back to his shoulders to his pointy moustache, and standing on the deck, tilted the pipe's mouth downward, spilling a cascade of smaller pipes nested one inside the other.

"All of 'em, looks like," said Gilbert.

A clunk from behind startled them. Captain Turner had just walked backwards out of a nearby wall. He glanced around, puzzled as ever, and stopped, his arms and one leg still hidden in the passage between ships. "Pardon me," he muttered, wading back into the boards. A second later they heard his tread on the decks above them, in the organ room, then a clamor of bangs and thunks of heavy objects hitting the floor.

"What's he want with that wheelbarrow?" someone asked. Maccus shook his head. He picked up one of the piccolo pipes and blew into it experimentally, drawing a rasping noise. Disgusted, he grabbed a candle from a deckhand and peered into the tube.

Captain had mangled the whistle's interior with that bloody marlinespike.

* * *

For the next weeks, whenever they sailed between wrecks and the dead lands, the winds steady and the sails set, the men sat in their hammocks reminiscing, dozing the hours away, and making clever cord buttons and carved pictures and other soothing and tedious arts that sailors use to amuse themselves, while the captain banged around in what had once been the organ room, making occasional trips to the decks beneath it where he was constructing a complicated beam system to spread some immense weight across the frame of the ship. They went to wrecks, checking for survivors as usual, and the captain, once they'd finished, would quickly run through the dead ships' holds, occasionally clumping back to the _Dutchman_ with a heavily loaded wheelbarrow before they all hastened off over or under the sea. 

The Dutchman cruised northward, back to the edge of the earth. The starboard watch loafed in the forecastle by lantern-light, several bulkheads between them and the bangs and clatters that now issued from the organ room. Maccus, since the seas were steady and the active watch could take care of themselves, had dropped by to lean in a corner and listen. A small pipe rolled from under the table to bump against his boots and back again into the dark. He scowled.

Bootstrap noticed his glance and checked under the table himself, just as the pipe tinkled out over the floorboards on the next swell. He sighed, throwing the mate an apologetic shrug. "Can't say I'm surprised," he remarked. "Well—I'm surprised, but I ought to've seen it coming."

"Seen what comin'?" asked Maccus, feigning detachment.

"Oh, the…the…" the older man scratched his head, staring vaguely at the deck above them. "You know. Picking up the living, making poor Quittance take over for Jimmylegs…"

"Saving the mangy bastard from a righteous drubbing…" added Gilbert, proud to be the squeaky wheel of the group. Maccus rolled his eyes, but he shared the feeling.

"Like his mother," continued Bootstrap wistfully, ignoring the comment. "Terrible stubborn, she was. Like a wall. I loved her for it…first voyage I made with Sparrow, we took a good profit, and when once we docked near London—under the Navy's nose, I s'ppose, not that we cared—I bought her a clock. A little one. Lilies painted on the case, that she liked. Best present I ever got her, and that from pirate money. And little Will'm—" he grinned wryly to himself. "Little Will'm, while the kettle boiled, got into the case and pulled out all the brass bits. Wanted to see how it was inside. The missus threw a fit. Last night I ever saw him, 'till here, of course."

"She ever fix the clock?" asked Maccus sourly.

Bill shook his head, then brightened in that hesitant way he had. "I'll ask the Captain."

"You do that," said Maccus. Bootstrap seemed to miss the sarcasm.

* * *

Those engineering types show their destructive urges early. 

Coming up: picking up the living! A complete change of pace.


	4. Another Eccentric Captain

**Another Eccentric Captain**

The name under her squat, dented bow read "Phoebe Greene," but this little brig, whose sails were all patches and ropes all splices, went by a humbler name. Phoebe Greene herself, if she had ever existed, would be relieved that this fifty-year-old tub had dispensed with her memory.

"Steady, girl," muttered the captain. "Good _Birdie._ Steady, bird." A wave nosed against the side—or was it a shark?—and he yelped, gripping the useless tiller with his good hand and his elbow. "Steady!"

The men huddled on the poop deck, visible only by the lumps their heads made beneath the rumpled fair-weather mainsail. With one mast blown off and trailing after them, the other bearing only the smallest triangle of canvas, and a good fifteen feet of water in the hold, keeping the rain off was all that poor patched sail was good for.

Captain McGraw had never had the sense to get out of the rain.

He cut a lopsided figure, braced against the wheel. His left hand was gone, along with half his forearm, which he had replaced with a sort of trident-fire-poker hook. His left eye was gone, too, leaving a deep gouge proudly outlined by gaudy blue tattoos, and a white track and a bony ridge disappeared into his hairline nearby. He was fond of ridiculous hats, and the specimen that now sheltered his shaggy head—stiff green felt, greased from the pork barrel to keep the water off, crested by a sopping and bedraggled tuft of horsehair—outdid his tradition.

The storm had lulled, but the little boats were too light to take to the seas just yet, which still capped white and tossed their broad backs like hobbled young bulls shoved in a stockyard. The blasting wind pelted them with spray, driving stinging drops like the cord-ends of an idly swinging lash, and dragging the foundering ship further and further eastward, out of their course toward Boston. They had meant to resupply there, set sail again, and ride south, but this storm had proved more than the _Birdie_'s old mast could take.

Under the crumpled mainsail, each man had a hand on his sea-chest. The canvas rustled; the men were passing around a bottle, waiting for the word to abandon ship.

McGraw gave a squawk like a strangled hog, spinning and staring over the port rail, and the mass of men staggered upright and struggled out of the mainsail, eyes only for the water washing over the deck below them. "The boats, Captain?" asked the first mate softly. Once the ship sunk in earnest, they knew, its vortex could drag a swimmer under.

McGraw stood stiff, blinking rapidly in his right eye, then jabbed his hook in the air over the port side, recovering his tongue. "Damn your eyes, ya bloomin—bloody—blanspacked idiots!" he choked. "Ghost ship!"

She hung head to the storm, water sluicing from her gunports, a knot of men at her bow. Her name glittered in the _Birdie_'s dim lantern.

"The _Dutchman_," the mate shuddered. "Makes port in Hell, sails to gather souls for the Devil."

"Hear they squeeze men's livers for drinkin' water," quavered a deckhand.

"Butchers. Come ta put us outa our misery," the bosun growled.

Silence and shivering. The water stopped rushing from the strange ship, and she twisted her jib and solemnly sidled toward the wallowing _Birdie_, as scraps of stories drifted up into the captain's mind. The ghost ship, floating hell.

The last ship any of them would see. No escape in the boats, no three-day journey through cold and breakers to the Colonies: out of their misery, they would ornament the _Birdie_'s sunken rail with their bones. Those of the crew who had been praying trailed off, leaving only the shriek of wind and clatter of rain. The _Dutchman_ had come. What use was pleading?

"No," said the captain to himself. Then, stronger, "No! No, men, up-up! Arms at hand, spikes, knives, garrotte lines. Up-up!" The men blinked, then in a flurry they reached for their belt knives, a few throwing open sea chests for more weapons. "Somebody gimme Old Bess," McGraw growled. The mate picked up an oversized musket from where she lay in a sleeve of oilcloth at his feet, the only hand-held gun on the little cargo vessel, and solemnly handed her to his captain, who, with equal ceremony, took his powder horn from under his coat and began to load her one-handed. "We're not one-legged rats, men," he mused, "and Captain Jonas over there will find himself a pretty poor cat."

"Jones, sir," corrected the mate.

"Jones, right. Jonas was the whaling chap." He shoved a ball down the long rifled barrel, grunting with effort and nearly bending the ramrod.

A man was yelling across the gap from the ghost ship, his words swept sternward by the wind. Captain McGraw splashed some powder over the flash pan and smacked the lid shut, then shrugged the horn back under his coat, tucking Bess surreptitiously against his elbow as he turned to the _Dutchman_.

He clapped his hand to his ear, and the other man yelled again, and again the sound died in the passage.

"Bugger off!" McGraw bellowed. The other man shouted back a third time, and the ghost ship continued its approach.

McGraw shook his head.

"Right, right," he said to his men. "Fan out. String out, shanks out, chins up. Look fierce, like we're regiment or sommat." He swung his iron claw haphazardly, until they broke their huddle and spread in a rough line across the aftcastle. "Chase ole Danny Jones back to Hell, eh?"

Their sodden bearded faces glowered back at him in the dark, and for a long moment McGraw was certain they thought him a daft cripple—he knew he was: since he'd been shot in the head, some mornings he found himself putting on two undershirts or mysteriously unable to pronounce the letter "Q"; he never dared imagine what he might do to the rigging on days like those—and he feared that his crew would be his no longer.

Then a gloomy little gnome lifted his battered nose in the lantern light, his eyes mere shining pinpricks under his cap, but his jaw set and a mad grin on his lips. He raised his knife. "Aye, Captain!" he snarled, like a badger. The coin was tossed; McGraw had won this night.

The rest of the men followed, knives and marlinespikes jabbing into the air, _Aye, Captain_'s rising into a chorus. McGraw smiled, turning away to face the ghost ship to hide the relief that was rising behind his eye, heavy old Bess climbing toward his shoulder.

Turning just in time to see a dozen scraggly men appear from thin air, lurching from the port railing. Lightning seemed to jolt from his neck to his toes. "Arrah!" McGraw bellowed, drowning his cry with a venomous bark from the musket, before he twirled her in his hand and charged, flailing right and left with fifteen pounds of wood and iron, trailed by the knives of his howling, desperate crew.

It was dark chaos, the faint binnacle light strobing through the melee, all hot breath and elbows and boots and glinting teeth and jagged steel, tossing and shoving, all battle-blind, fingers tingling with terror and hard around their weapons as the roots of trees, breath hoarse, feet scuffling for balance against the shadowed foe and the wretched tossing of the sea-slick deck. The smell of blood.

"Turn back!" A raspy voice cut through the fighting.

McGraw caught a man in the stomach with Bess's nose, doubling him over and against the railing; he caught his breath. "Fight-fight!" he bellowed to his men—had that cry come from his side? To his surprise, the man he had struck was suddenly gone; the _Birdie_'s crew struggled on in frenzy, but there was no longer anyone to struggle against. Two messmates were headlocked, near to sticking each-other in the rips when McGraw grabbed one by the scruff of his neck and kneed the other in the gut. They spun, and for an instant, McGraw could well have been stuck in the ribs himself. "Weigh enough, men!" he bellowed. "Knives down. Down, down, weigh enough, weigh enough. They've scarpered."

The men of the _Birdie_ collected their wits, checked for injuries—few—and settled into sullen silence, scowling at the _Dutchman_. "Wasn't so bad," said McGraw cautiously. It was a bad luck phrase, but he couldn't help but say it.

* * *

Connor McGraw is a male, 17th century version of a role-play character of mine, the tough, ditzy space-truck pilot Constance McGraw, who has a robotic arm and infrared eye instead of a hook arm and no eye. She, also, talks to her ratty third-hand ship, and calls it "Puppy." 

Yes, Captain McGraw managed to confuse Davy Jones with Jonah, fumble both their names, and switch "whaling" for "getting eaten by a whale." Words are not his friend.

Will returns next chapter.


	5. The Ghosts

**The Ghosts **

The rescue hadn't gone well. Most of the men with Captain Turner had been stabbed, several badly. He himself had been shot square in the chest. The little brig had received them as though they were an armed boarding party, though he had clearly explained—he thought they'd heard—he could have sworn—that he intended to rescue them, and none of his party were armed other than their belt knives. He had had his sword, but he hadn't drawn it.

Someone had to calm down that crew.

Captain Turner stared across the breach at the foundering _Birdie_, took a deep breath, and popped back to its aftcastle, facing the startled Captain McGraw where he stood by the binnacle, apart from the men. He turned his palms upward, empty.

McGraw squinted and hefted Bessie like a club in his one meaty fist, but made no move to continue the fight. Turner coughed, and the crew of the _Phoebe_ recoiled like startled cats.

"What's your business here, Jones?" McGraw demanded, his good eye twitching and glaring with his words. "We're just out for a jaunt in a squall, run a spot o' trouble, bit o' little bit o' bad little bit o' luck, nothin' worry, ain't that right, men? Right, right." He curled his lip in defiance, fear showing white around his nostrils. "Blow."

Turner nodded, a bit puzzled by McGraw's stammer, but still all courtesy. "Davy Jones is no longer captain," he explained, in a hoarse voice not like his own, and coughed again. There was a gravelly wheeze in his throat; he felt he was choking. "My name is—_cough_—Will Turner," he said, before a fit of coughs struck him, forcing him to bend over and grip the rail for support. He composed himself and looked back at the other crew, a bit flushed, feeling the wheeze still, and noticing that the men were staring at him rather oddly.

McGraw handed Bess to the nearest deckhand, then walked to within arm's length of Turner. "You've got a…a something," he said, then reached over behind Turner's jaw, as though about to wipe off a smear of sauce, and with a twitch of his wrist, removed a four-inch belt knife. "Stuck to your neck," McGraw finished. He flipped the knife and offered the hilt to Turner, who had turned a bit green at the sight.

"It's not mine," Turner said, unconsciously rubbing his throat, looking for the hole. The wheezing was gone. So was the fissure that the knife had cut through his jugular, gullet, and windpipe, where it had happily nestled and he hadn't even noticed.

"Right, then. Oy," said McGraw, turning to his men, "which one of you stuck his knife in this cap'n's neck?" The bosun paled, and the others stared pointedly in all directions but Turner's. "Eh. Don't answer that." McGraw pocketed the knife. "So, cap'n Jones—"

"Turner."

"Mr. Turner—"

"Captain Turner," said Captain Turner patiently, trying not to sound arrogant.

"But isn't that the _Flying Dutchman_?"

"Yes—"

"There's not two of them, is there?"

"No—Captain Jones is dead," said Turner, before the other man could cut in again. "The _Dutchman_ is here to take you to the nearest port."

The crew of the _Phoebe_ muttered and mulled over this bizarre announcement. No one knew exactly what the _Dutchman_ and it's demonic captain did, but rescue—honest rescue, with no one paying his soul in the aftermath—was not in the stories. On the other hand, crossing the open ocean in a storm in the longboats didn't seem much of a plan. "Where's the rub?" drawled Captain McGraw.

"All the water and provisions will come from your ship," said Turner. "We don't carry any."

"That's it?"

"Nothing more."

"Swear on the Good Book?" suggested McGraw, with an almost cunning look in his eye.

"Of course, Captain," Turner replied, straight-faced. One of McGraw's men produced a Bible, on which Turner swore, as McGraw directed, to "haul arse west-ward and see us off nice-like, no funny business."

That seemed to satisfy him, if not the whole of the crew. "One o' yours," said McGraw, waving his claw over Turner's shoulder and passing the Bible back to the mate, "got a shark on his arse, does he?"

Turner turned around, and back on the _Dutchman_, Gilbert Coombs was indeed hopping about and yelling as though a shark were attached to his backside, trying to get his attention. "Pardon me," said Turner, and he melted through the binnacle and back onto his own aftcastle as quietly as though he had just ducked into another room. "What is it, Mr. Coombs?"

"_Salvage!_" Gilbert hissed, eyes urgent.

"To your station!" said Captain Turner reproachfully. He popped back to the _Phoebe_. Captain McGraw had buried his beard in his elbow, shoulders shaking with mirth—or hysterical relief after a long night of compounding disasters, culminating in a visit by a mannerly black-clad ghost. "Captain, if you will take your men aboard in your boats, mine will show them to the forecastle, and if you remind them, they might get a fire going. I'll go below and see if anything can be done for your barque."

"Hah! Ah!" barked Captain McGraw. He slapped this thigh with his right hand. Turner glanced around, uncertain what to make of him. When McGraw managed to contain himself, he was grinning, the smile twisting his right eye charmingly and contorting the gaping canyon that took the place of his left. "Gulp water like a codfish, eh? Good man!" He slapped Turner vigorously on the back, nearly knocking his feet from under him as the ship tossed. Turner smiled uneasily. "Right, right!" he bellowed to his men. "To boats! We're takin' hospitality tonight, look lively, don't fergit a keg o' brandy fer our generous ghosts! Hosts! Put those pig-stickers away sharplike, men, we're not makin' another bloomin' knife-fight."

* * *

You know the best way to ensure honest dealings out of supernatural beings is to force them to swear on the Bible.

* * *


	6. Nautical Acrobatics

**Nautical Acrobatics**

Over his head, Turner heard the rumble of boots and bare feet as the men of the _Birdie_ heaved the boats over the rail by main force, rolling and shoving them by teams, since the hoisting tackle had fallen with the mast. The midships deck was nearly underwater, so the freed boats scuffed their gunnels at the bottom of the rail, making for an easy hop off the sinking ship.

The water was at his chin, and this was only the upper gun deck. He exhaled and dropped to his knees, forcing in slow, deliberate breaths. The seawater dragged in his lungs and made his throat seize up in rebellion, but the discomfort was better than the panic that struck when tried not to breathe. Sculling down with his hands, he sank through the floor to the cargo hold, then rolled on his back, weightless in the black water, clinging upside-down to the beams of the deck overhead as he coasted toward the hull. His head rammed painfully against a crate, and he felt his path more carefully with one hand.

The hold, he realized, was jam-packed with sealed crates. Streams of bubbles rose from them where the water pressure had conquered the leaden envelopes inside, tickling his neck. Despite the air sealed in them, the crates rested firmly on the floor.

There was less than a foot of clearance between the hull and the cargo, an oversight on McGraw's part that made repairing any damage near the waterline next to impossible. Turner tried to squirm into the gap, realized the effort of checking the hull that way was more trouble than he needed, and instead pressed himself against it and faded out of the ship.

The storm-surge caught at him and nearly dragged him off. Turner snatched out, gripping the _Birdie_'s belly by the barnacles, grimacing as the shells cut at his fingers. He managed to press himself flat to the wood.

Spidering around the hull, he finally found the breach: an oblong crack between the boards where the water rushed through and tried to suck his boot off his leg. He supposed the fallen mainmast, floating on the swells and tethered too close to the ship by the standing rigging, had knocked the hole before the men could cut the shorter lines loose. It was common.

Finished, he appeared at the _Dutchman_'s binnacle where he could see the last of the boats drop from the hoist to his deck. The other captain must already be in the forecastle.

"Oh-ho, he does use doors!" McGraw greeted him when he entered, busy hanging his sopping greatcoat from one of the many nails in the beams that the _Dutchman_'s crew had taken to drying their clothes on—now that the ship was dry most of the time, instead of laden with wet rot.

Turner wrung a handful of seawater out of his shirt. "Comfortable?"

The dozen men who crowded the forecastle filled it with a swell of laughter, cursing, stomping, and relief, under a jungle of dripping outerwear. A lantern gleamed somewhere deeper into the room; only the ceiling reflected its light, as the rest was blocked by coats and bodies. What men he could see sat cross-legged on every foot of floorspace. He assumed the benches and table were occupied.

"Beats sittin' arse to ankles unner tha' mains'l," declared a young swab.

"Sharrup'n watch it," growled another. Turner noticed a suspicious eye peering at him behind a greatcoat.

"Fire smoked like a shite, we doused it," said the other captain, still grinning. "What's damage?"

Turner described the dimensions and location of the hole in fair detail.

McGraw pondered, shutting his eye and adjusting the straps that kept his claw on his stump. "Reckon it's patchable. Take a devil's hand at the pump, little support ship, floats, grapples…less o'course she go under. Murrgh, given we find her again." He sighed. "Naw. Naw, got no navigatin' unner that storm. She's a gonner."

"I have her coordinates," said Turner. The _Dutchman_'s charts marked every crevasse and seamount they had skimmed over, better than any land map. "But the cargo is dragging her down. It's heavier than water. The hull might float without it, but she's likely to drop within the hour unless my men take it out of her."

McGraw raised his eyebrow. "Grand if they'd try."

"We could use the ballast," Turner assured him.

He headed back onto the deck, into the wavering storm, and hailed Maccus, who was tying a bandage on his left forearm. "Do you wish to go below?" he asked, concerned.

"No, Captain. Me lungs and eyes are well."

"Take some men to the barque and carry over anything heavy from the hold. Stack it aft and port." Maccus passed on the order as Turner climbed to the helm, and the crew obeyed with what Turner should have judged was unseemly enthusiasm. Soon the hold thudded with the shift of oncoming cargo, and the _Dutchman_ slowly began to list to port, a few waves slopping over the rail.

* * *

They'd taken enough. Turner called up all hands, and with a tense grin, ordered them to "fishtail on the starboard tack," drawing excited laughter and nervous answering grins. He searched the faces for Maccus, and gave him a nod. Captain and first mate split ways, the mate to the forecastle and the captain aft. Maccus grabbed Quittance by the shoulder. "Get a man to stand for Blakeley, would ya?" 

Quittance hesitated, glancing down toward the hold. "I'll do for him."

"Deck team, stick with Wyvern."

The _Dutchman_ was a marvelous ship, with more secrets to her than her triple guns. She was shot through with a network of valves and sluice gates for the passage of seawater. Her cannons could fire at an uncanny rate because they loaded by a hatch at the back, instead of through the muzzle. Even the hinges of the disused galley were unique, with articulation that let the cupboard doors stretch out from their base. With the crusts of her dishonor cleared away, Turner could see that much of what he had assumed was the brute might of eldritch forces was instead the cunning of some resident tinkerer.

Her rigging held another marvel, this one relying as much on the skill of the men and the captain as on the set of her ropes and the peculiar knot systems that held the yards to the masts. "Mr. Roland, coil out the main yard tails," Turner shouted. "Mr. Larekey, loose the starboard main yard stay. Mr. Coombs, assist Mr. Roland!" As the men climbed the ratlines, Turner watched the water, judging the storm's force. "Mr. Maccus!" he called. "Might we stand the topsails in this wind?"

"Aye, if ye care ta nursemaid 'em, Cap'n!" Maccus bellowed back, before ordering a pair of men to the foremast. New men joined them, climbed higher, rose to work the topsails.

Turner adjusted the wheel, holding the _Dutchman_'s head dead to windward, as the shaggy sails billowed back against the masts. "Mr. Larekey, Mr. Turner, loose the port sheets and make fast to starboard cleats: Mainsail, cleat four! Main tops, cleat one!"

Eight men worked aloft, two to a yard. On the rain-slick deck, men scurried to switch the port sheets to the opposite side, tugging the sails and yardarms into a slant.

"The devil you do to the rigging?" demanded a rough voice. Turner startled and spun around. Captain McGraw had joined him on the aftcastle, very discretely for a man with a gait like a bear and a voice like a bull walrus.

"Fishtail," explained Turner hurriedly, before calling, "Slide-wrap tails! Starboard tack!" The men on the yardarms slithered back to the mast, looping ropes from the tips of the yards to waiting cleats, then hauled, one man pulling down and the other pulling up, twisting the sails sideways. Turner watched with concern, giving the wheel another twitch to windward. "It's how the _Dutchman_ sails into the wind," he told McGraw, never taking his eyes off the rigging. He was grateful for Maccus. The first mate was keeping a practiced eye on the mainmast, in addition to conducting the foremast.

The aloft teams clung to the masts by knees and arms, tail ropes steady in their fists, waiting for his signal. "Mainmast, set to tack!" Turner bellowed.

"Foremast, set to tack!" came Maccus' answering shout.

"Mr. Cummings, Mr. Larekey, main! Mr. Wyvern, Mr. Chattroy, fore! Loose and lift starboard sheets, thread to fishtail blocks, and await haul!"

McGraw goggled as the men loosed the starboard sheets from their cleats on deck and bent them into moving rope-and-tackles that hung from each rearward mast, which the men heaved their shoulders into to send the lines whirring upward, dragging up the starboard clews of the sails by the wildly flogging ropes: the fore sails stretched back toward cleats on the mainmast, the main sails to the mizzen. "All tails tighten," Turner called. The yards heeled over, nearly vertical, the sails flapping free like flags. "Haul starboard sheets! Hook to fishtail lines! Mr. Turner, take in slack on the port sheets! Main tops tails, tighten! Mainsail tails, make fast! Main tops, make fast! Mr. Roland, assist Mr. Chattroy to haul down the fore tops line!"

"All tails, make fast and drop!" Maccus roared. Men scrambled down the ratlines, the sails flagging in the headwind, the yards securely cock-eyed. "Clanker, haul with Bootstrap on the port sheets! Quittance, make fast! All hands, make fast and drop!"

The crew clustered about the deck, beginning to migrate to the port side, where the ballast had already forced the ship to her beam-ends.

"Mr. Roland, Mr. Chattroy, back the jib hard to port!" Turner shouted. Two men loosed the jib sheet and hauled across, pushing the triangle sail against the wind as they wrapped it around a cleat and pulled it tight. The jib caught the wind backwards, driving the _Dutchman_'s head to starboard as Turner spun the wheel to assist it.

McGraw stared at the sails, which were luffing wildly in the headwind, tightened though they were by the crazily strung sheets. It struck him that the _Dutchman_ had been made to emulate a fore-and-aft rig.

"Jib to center!" Chattroy and Roland loosened their rope and slacked it, letting the jib swell just in line with the keel. Overhead, the sails began to catch the headwind at an angle, puffing and tightening. The _Dutchman_ slowly turned to starboard, and Turner began to brace against the wheel as the wind caught. "Jib to close-haul!" he grunted.

"Close-haul jib!" Maccus bellowed, barely catching the command from his station and passing it on to the men. They made it fast perhaps twenty degrees to starboard, the closest jib McGraw had ever seen, but at least some semblance of normalcy. It wasn't upside down, he supposed.

A gust seized his hat, and he clamped an arm over it.

The _Dutchman_ lurched off its sunken rail. The wind whistled over the port bow, seeming to pick up speed and force as the sails hardened with strain. They caught it obliquely—the wind kissed and flowed right past them, but the ship slid forward by a miracle, heeling starboard, charging against the waves. The rain battered his hand, the sea crashed up against the lee rail, the men stared up at the sails like mother lions whose cubs had begun to hunt, like glass-cutters watching a rose window waft toward its niche on frail guy-wires, like sailors who had just set a difficult tack. Turner had his knee jammed against the wheel, brow furrowed, eyes only for the tension of the sails. The _Dutchman_ sped ever faster, heeled ever harder under the wind, slipping forward and sideways against the waves, her hull climbing out from the pressure of the onrushing sea until the waves chopped almost under her keel and the whole ship boomed with the impacts. Turner's hands on the tiller seemed to tremble; McGraw impetuously grabbed one of the spokes, and it hummed under his fingers.

"Fishtail," he said wonderingly.

"Only the _Dutchman_," Turner grunted. He laughed to himself. "If Jack could see this…"

The faster they flew, the faster the wind flowed, and the faster they flew again. The dying gale had become, for them, a hurricane sucking them forward. The sail-set was fragile, the tiller was strained, but nothing could match the ship now, as her bones and rigging screamed and she beat her breast on the jagged waves. McGraw watched the men on deck whoop in triumph, hats tight in their fists.

He leaned against the rail, broad mouth wide for rain.

* * *

This chapter has a lot of veeery questionable nautical stuff.

Could a ship half-sunk with a hole in it be pumped out and repaired? Maybe, maybe not. With no cargo to drag it down, the buoyancy of the wood ought to keep it barely afloat. Could they find it again, even with the coordinates? Not likely. Maybe if they looked really, really hard. Captain Frederick Marryat seemed to think it was possible to salvage a leaking ship when he wrote The Privateersman, and his book, now a Project Gutenberg E-Book, also suggested that a fallen mast could cause the _Birdie_'s damage.

Do the triple-guns load at the breech like modern cannons? It makes sense to me.

Can you make a square-rigger travel faster upwind by tilting the sails? Bullcrap. When I wrote this, I was trying to figure out some explanation for the _Dutchman_'s upwind speed. I have fond (well, if not fond, certainly vivid) memories of sailing on a fore-and-aft rigged sport catamaran, and whatever its true speed was, upwind (strictly speaking, close to the wind) always felt much faster than downwind, since moving against the wind amplifies the perceived wind speed, and we would hit waves much more frequently because we were traveling in the opposite direction to them. The boat would hum whenever we really got going.

What the_ Dutchman_ is doing here is not sailing up wind _per se_, which is physically impossible, but sailing extremely close to the wind, taking advantage of aerodynamic lift as the wind rushes past the curve of the sails. The ship is just sailing closer to the wind than any mortal craft possibly could.

To any other questions from any actual sailors, I reply, simply: Calypso did it.


	7. Farewell, Fair Winds

**Farewell, Fair Winds**

The _Birdie_'s men passed a recuperative twenty hours in the dark, damp, sweaty, and thoroughly humanized jungle that had overtaken the forecastle, lounging about the floor, dozing off their anxiety from the storm, drinking brandy, and devouring the salt pork and water saved from their stores. All who were able had gone up as soon as it was light to look at the rigging. "'Tis a hellish tight reach upwind," noted the bosun. "T'ain't possible, e'en with the sails all canted into lateen bed-sheets."

"Witchcraft?" asked a young swab.

"Aye, a part," he replied. "O'course, they went to an awful trouble to trim this rig, so it must do somethin'."

It was now mid-afternoon, and the storm had mostly given way to more easy-tempered clouds and a soggy breeze. Turner had braced the tiller all through the night and for most of the day; the _Dutchman_ always sailed better, somehow, under the captain's exclusive eye, and on a 'special' tack like the fishtail, the captain's eye separated a brisk sail from total inertia or disaster.

Clutching the cold, thrumming tiller until his fingers turned to jelly and ice, his knees began to buckle, and his eyes could barely focus on the curve of the topsails was not one of Captain Turner's more prudent plans—about as prudent as the day, night, and a half he'd once spent bent over the anvil pounding out an order of bayonets until his elbow gave out. The tiller had pulled to starboard with anywhere from a third to two thirds of his weight, and while a little thing the equivalent of carrying a sack of grain on each arm all night and day couldn't tire the Captain of the _Flying Dutchman_, Turner was still mentally exhausted and chilled through from the rain.

Slumped against the forward rail, resting his eyes, he longed for a nice hot bowl of stew.

"Daisy-day!" roared McGraw's jolly voice. "Castle Bill! When you said port, I figgered we'd row ashore to some native fishin' cove, not bloomin' Boston Harbor! Good man! Thankee, thankee, bless yer soul, you canny dog. Come below fer a jot o' whiskey?"

Turner twisted around, hugging his chest in hypothermia, and glanced over his shoulder. On a steep peninsula nearby, Castle William had raised a flag, signaling to the harbor beyond that a ship was in sight. Its gun ports glowered down at them.

"Mr. Maccus," he called.

"Captain?"

"Beat up to the mouth of the harbor once our yards are squared again, then heave to and ready the tackles to set down Captain McGraw's boats."

"Aye, sir."

"Captain, I would love a spot of that whiskey."

* * *

In what had once been the organ room, McGraw and Turner sipped a very decent Scotch whiskey from tin cups, perching on stacks of bricks that Turner had salvaged from the galleys of a dozen ships with a wheelbarrow he'd found on the burned-out French 74. Around them, with their own tin cups and vulturine grins, clustered the half of the _Birdie_'s men who hadn't been sleeping when McGraw had stumped into the forecastle to retrieve his bottle. With a wink—a blink actually, but it looked like a wink—McGraw set his cup down and passed the bottle to the nearest sailor, and in a minute it had visited each man and returned, nearly empty, to its owner's heavy paw. "Shall I top 'er off?" he asked, sloshing it toward Turner's cup. 

He shook his head, watching several of the men knock back the burning liquor in two swallows. "Your men seem rather thirsty."

"Aye, sad sots, the lot of 'em," agreed McGraw, passing the bottle to an older man, the first to finish, who licked his chops and quickly polished off the dregs of the whiskey.

"What brings you to the Northwest, Captain?" Turner asked him, feeling a bit hemmed in under the curious and wary eyes of the _Birdie_'s crew. It reminded him of being a half-prisoner on the _Endeavor_, only here the men watching him wore oiled coats and tarred breeches, instead of stockings and Navy jackets. Come to think of it, apart from his own crew—now that they were his, that is—he had never met a group of sailors that he'd be entirely confident turning his back on.

"Buckskins," he said proudly. "Then in Gloucester it's kettles and hatchet-heads. See, the natives down near Charleston give a pretty stack of buckskins for an axe or a kettle, and back home the bucks fetch half again the price we pay."

"Tis a tidy racket," put in one of the men. A chorus of aye's rippled after.

"See, see, we set out for Charleston," continued McGraw. "But kettles and hatchets, we sell those anywhere. We'll sell enough to pump the _Birdie_ out—thankee again, bearing our cargo, bloody decent of you."

"We did need the ballast," said Turner. "Before we reach the mouth, you should go below and decide what to take ashore in your boats."

"Aye, I been ponderin' that. See, there plenty room for the dozen of us, but for the crates…one crate apiece, and that's riskin' a swamp."

"We have spare casks. You could tow a few crates—use the cask as a float."

McGraw jerked up his claw in excitement, making Turner wonder if he had put out his eye in just that way. "Bully!" he shouted. He grinned up at his crew. "Gents! We'll break even yet on this damn-damned trip!"

* * *

In the hold, at Turner's orders, the _Dutchman _crew piled up what personal gear they'd impetuously scavenged from the _Birdie_'s sea chests, and returned them to their owners. McGraw and his crew thanked them, then selected the cargo crates of salable wares and left the crates destined specifically for Charleston to their rescuers. The _Dutchman_'s crew and captain wrangled the monstrously heavy boxes to the upper deck, dropped off the boats, and wished the other crew luck before heeling around and scudding full sail back out to sea. 

They'd lost two days altogether on their way to the edge of the north Atlantic, and the dead waited.

* * *

The weather was vile for the next week.

* * *

Boston Harbor had a very cool fort at its mouth, called Castle William. 

I have to wonder how Captain McGraw got hired. It must have been through a family member; he's not exactly the freshest loaf in the basket. A small outfit like his isn't likely to last very long against the big trade conglomerates, either . . . There's a reason poor _Birdie_'s mast wasn't strong enough to last the storm.


	8. Men Before the Law

**Men Before the Law**

The crew had been waiting since Turner had first taken command for the first real test of his authority, and after they'd sailed south again, heading for the edge of the world in the other half of the Atlantic, that test presented itself in the hands of Gilbert Coombs.

Turner, almost before he knew the men by name, had recognized every knife they carried—by the curve of the grind, the design of the pommel and guard, the ripple of the steel. Throughout his apprenticeship, he'd seen more knives in a day than people; he knew knives. So when he'd noticed Mr. Coombs serving cable, cutting twine with an unfamiliar bone-handled puukko, he knew it wasn't from one of the wrecks. It had come from the _Birdie._

He was never indecisive, but watching Coombs, he stood still and gripped the railing for an instant, willing the electric cramp to leave his throat. An ocean away, his heart was pounding.

"Mr. Coombs," he said, after a breath, "Leave that and follow me."

With a wary slouch, Gilbert left the serving mallet with the cable and plodded belowdecks after his captain. They headed for the organ room, Turner marching grimly ahead, Coombs staring curiously around as he was lead inside, taking in the neat paneled walls and gleaming brass fittings. He had never entered this room in all his years aboard, though he didn't have to know the old room to see that Turner had practically torn it apart. Some sort of machine was visible through a gap in one bulkhead, and all around the floor were stacks of bricks and holystones. A dark patch on the floorboards marked where the organ had been.

His captain shut the door and turned quickly to face him. "Where did you get that knife?"

Gilbert blinked. Captain Turner had always seemed to him a gentle, mild-mannered sort, but the man before him was tense, perfunctory, sharp of eye. He followed his original plan. "What knife?" he asked.

"The wide-back bone-handle work knife," Turner fired back, staring him urgently in the eyes. "Where did you get it?"

Gilbert assumed an indolent slouch. "Pulled it off a wreck ."

"How long have you used it?"

Gilbert paused. He hadn't used it until that morning, having left it with his gear so as not to join its arrival to the departure of the _Birdie. _Perhaps Captain Turner would give him the benefit of the doubt. "Been usn' it the past month or so, Cap'n."

Turner slammed his fist against the wall, and Gilbert took a step backward. He hadn't known Turner had a temper. They stared at each-other for an instant, Turner's throat working as if to frame his words. "You know I ordered _everything_ taken from the _Birdie_ brought to the hold for the crew to inspect before they left," he said to Gilbert. "You have already theft and disobedience; I'm giving you one chance not to be a liar. Please."

* * *

Maccus swung gingerly out of his hammock, prodding the bandage on his left forearm, a souvenir from the ill-conceived confrontation with the _Birdie_. 

The day before, when the captain had called Gilbert so abruptly from his cable wrapping, had been a tense one for Maccus. The honeymoon was over with the first lashing, on any ship: that day, a captain would show if he was a weak or firm man, reasonable or sadistic, and the spirit of the crew would bend accordingly. Maccus had no idea what to expect. He hadn't heard so much as a landsman's cursing from Captain Turner, while most sailors made it a point of pride to sharpen obscenities; yet he knew the man was a fighter. While Turner conferred with Gilbert in private—an unusual step for a captain, unless it was to batter a man where his mates couldn't step in to protect him—Maccus had watched over the deck, praying that Turner would not call him in for advice. The _Dutchman_ sailed under the commission of a goddess, who granted autocratic authority to the captain. Were he to seek the opinion of an underling, he would jeopardize his place with the men, and thus the hierarchy and order of the whole ship.

Maccus had not been called down. After ten minutes, he guessed, Gilbert returned to his cable, using his old thin-ground work knife. Captain Turner remained below; hours later, when Maccus put his ear to the planks, he heard rapid pacing and shuffling from the organ room.

Today was the day. The men assembled on deck, both watches, crowded around the foremast where the Captain, Quittance as the new bosun, and Gilbert Coombs stood waiting.

Captain Turner hoisted himself up the ladder to the forecastle by an arm and a leg, peering sharply around to make sure no one remained belowdecks; a boyish move. He was clearly nervous. Maccus winced, and took his place at Turner's right, once he had hopped down again.

"All hands accounted for?" the Captain asked him. Maccus 'Aye Captain'ed and saluted.

A pair of noose loops had been hung from a foremast cleat. "Mr. Coombs, stand at the masthead," Turner ordered, wooden. Coombs took a moment to comply, glancing from side to side and surprised that no one was there to grip him by the elbows.

"Mr. Coombs, take off your shirt and stretch out your hands."

Maccus had to raise his eyebrows. Gilbert's back was knotted and streaked with more scars than the worm-holes on a year-old biscuit, far more than was survivable in a single day. A habitual offender. Gilbert's face, as Turner slipped the loops over his hands, read more of resigned curiosity than fear, rather like a bored prize-fighter sizing up a future bout.

Turner was pale. He tightened the ropes carefully over Gilbert's wrists, took in slack until Gilbert was standing lightly on his toes, and handed a long cloth bag to Quittance. "Mr. Coombs."

The crew grew quiet and leaned in to listen.

"For—" The captain broke off and swallowed.

Maccus froze.

"For lying to a superior officer," Turner continued, one hand clenched around his belt, "You are sentenced—" He broke off again and bent his head, then faced the crew, forcing out the words. "I sentence you to six strokes of the cat."

The crew shifted. He was really going through the whole ceremony before the whipping.

"For disobeying an—my order to present all the items from the _Phoebe Greene_ to her crew for review, I sentence you to six strokes of the cat."

Gilbert chomped his jaw and loosened his shoulders, spreading his feet wide.

"For the theft of a work knife from the _Phoebe Greene_…seeing that restitution is impossible, I sentence you to two strokes of the cat."

They waited. All of them, even Captain Turner.

He turned to Quittance, who was rooted to the deck, gripping the bag. "Mr. Chattroy, begin."

Quittance took the cat-of-nine-tails out of its bag and swung it, the knotted cords swipping over Coombs' back.

"One," Turner said.

* * *

No matter the captain, and whether performed at the masthead before the entire crew or alone in the hold with a knotted rope, once blood flowed, a whipping was a whipping. 

Maccus had never discussed the matter with his shipmates—from watching them, he knew the screams might make one man ill, a captain's or bosun's savagery enrage another, justice decide for a third—but to Maccus, the heart of the matter was the broken skin, the permanent damage to a man's body. The smell of blood.

Blood flicked from the cat, hot-copper-rust scent peeling through the air. A hundred whippings he remembered, then so many executions, sailors guttering out under his hand: always the same, the scent set a tingling in his spine and the fingers of his knife hand, made him want to circle and pace, stiffened his neck and sharpened his eyes. The recognition thrilled him.

"Seven."

Gilbert was a hard one, he noticed: he kept his teeth set, but not grating, pasted on a peculiar drunken-pained smile, and swayed his back to meet the cords and shorten their cut. Red runnels crept down to his belt.

"Twelve."

Never had he seen Captain Turner's face so stony.

Discipline, Maccus had seen, was in a way harder on the captain than on the man under the whip—and not just when the captain had a weak stomach. On a democratic vessel, like many pirate ships, the captain held few honors, but enjoyed trust and friendship like any other. He had neither right nor duty to harm any of the crew; discipline was performed as a body.

Captain Turner, like a merchant or a navy captain, would be regarded with fear, and honored with isolation. From today on, he was cut off. There was a reason captains grew harsh.

* * *

"Fourteen."

* * *

Still sniffing the air, Maccus barely registered when Coombs was released from the mast and sent below to be bandaged by his mates. 

Quittance shuffled toward Turner, extending the reddened cat in sick fingers. "Cap'n, if I may—I haven't the heart for it, Cap'n," he murmured.

Turner took the whip absently, watching the starboard watch file down the hatch. "Good. That's good."

Then the captain was the last below, and Maccus roused himself and looked after the port watch. Just before the last bell, before he was to retire to his berth, he got a clean bucket, rinsed a swab in fresh seawater, and slowly scrubbed the boards under the foremast until the spatters faded into the wood.

* * *

A puukko is a little Swedish work knife. I found it on Wikipedia and used it because it has a funny name. 

I'm really curious what you thought of this particular chapter.


	9. Fishing on the Flying Dutchman

**Fishing on the _Flying Dutchman_  
**

The next day, they dove into a southerly current which they rode for the following week. The ship fell silent; the men cursed and joked by grimaces and hand signals; the captain and the mate sounded orders by drumming on a bell. Light on deck was dim, below was impenetrable, and those who scaled the rigging could mark as the dimness gave way with each second of climbing. Maccus hung about above-decks for days at a time, ready whenever the captain could not make himself understood.

Gilbert Coombs returned to light duty, ornery as ever. The saltwater burned his back, but the cooling was a comfort.

For a few leagues, they sailed under a pod of fin whales, swift and phlegmatic creatures on their way to cold feeding grounds. At Maccus' suggestion, Turner had a man armed with a pike aloft on each topyard, to fend the whales off should they get too curious about the rigging. Swarms of krill near the surface would periodically shade out the sun. They ran into a bank of sardines on the fourth day; the fish clung to the ship, sheltering near the sails, under the hull, and even below decks when they could get there. Thankfully, they turned for the undersea before the pests could attract sharks.

They sank deep, under the edge of the earth, losing the fish in the blackness where the force of the water made sparks dance behind their eyes and their fingers fail and tremble, somewhere twisting around so that when they rose, they rose on the other face of the ocean, to let the water pour and dribble from the sails and gush from the sluices, drying the ship as the men breathed the air again.

They let the _Dutchman_ run before the wind, lazily rolling in the troughs of the waves.

At the bow, Penrod gave a shout of excitement and pointed into the water, and the deck crew scrambled to look over the side, Captain Turner included.

"It's a cone," announced Koleniko.

Jetting along beneath their bow wave, where often they might see a dolphin or a curious fish, was an enormous rigid cone, a narrow straight shell nearly as long as the _Dutchman_ was wide, streaked in dirty white and walnut, with a frill of thin tentacles and two large goatish eyes protruding from its base.

"What is it?" asked the Captain.

"It…well…" said Koleniko. "Looks to be a cone shell. With a squid in it."

Strange fish swam in the Undersea.

Maccus appeared at Turner's shoulder. "Cap'n, if I may, I'll set the port watch on fish duty."

"Thank-you, Mr. Maccus," said Turner. "Mr. Penrod, have we any harpoons?"

"Yes, Cap'n! Right away!" Penrod exclaimed, before rushing off below.

* * *

Fish duty did not involve any actual fishing. 

While the starboard watch clamored about the bow, trying to catch the squid and instead driving it under the hull, the port watch roused themselves to Maccus' roared insults on their mothers' integrity, grabbed buckets and lanterns, and patrolled the lower decks to scoop up the fish that had gotten trapped inside the ship and died in the black depths on their way to the Undersea. They peered into every corner, shoving goods and miscellany aside as the lantern beams thrust here and there.

"How d'ye expect a fish t'wiggle inta Clanker's chest?" Pip Finn demanded of Tom Sorrel, who had cracked open Clanker's belongings and was pawing through them, mischief in his eyes.

"Can't never be too careful, Pipes. Where's 'Niko berth?"

Finn pointed, and Sorrel pulled a half-carved whale tusk out of Clanker's chest and buried it in Koleniko's.

"Hoy, Broonie's been tying himself a bell-rope. Stow it with Young Ben?"

"Hah!" approved Sorrel, and he tossed Broondjongen's sea chest until he removed an ornate mass of turk's heads and sennits tied in worming cord. "Oh, Broonie's like t'be ticked as Hell's hounds, mark me!"

"Who else to do?"

"Gill's testy enough! What's he got on 'im?"

The more responsible of the port watch conducted a thorough search of every horizontal inch of the _Dutchman_. Bootstrap was canvassing the hold, a few dead fish limp in his bucket, when he discovered, fixed fast near the bottom of a shadowy bulkhead, a single barnacle. He pried it off with his knife and saved it carefully in a pocket.

* * *

In the first years of the Dutchman's service, when the underworld had been operating smartly, the lookouts had scanned the surface for floating fleets. Will Turner's crew struggled to peer down into the water, looking for shoals. Many of the men had been fishermen, and the captain frequently called on their expertise in bringing things from under the water onto the decks of a ship. 

It was daylight in the undersea, a decent breeze kept the hull stiff against the water, and Turner had ordered two boats launched, each fitted with a little spritsail and a rudder, and trailing the lines of a broad, shallow, wide-mesh net. Each boat both sailed itself and was towed by the _Dutchman_, holding a triangle formation as they cruised downwind. The boats dragged harder and harder against their rudders as they crossed the shoal, the triangle sharpening and the net bowing behind them, until they halted, hauled up the net with their catch, and beat back upwind for another pass.

The men in the boats were always overjoyed to be far from the deck when the nets were emptied.

Whenever they spotted a shoal, from below the water by the dark shapes against the surface, or from above water by the pale shapes beneath or occasionally by swarms of . . . not-birds circling over the souls to feed on the fish that hid beneath them, it was easy to forget that the shapes belonged to thinking, feeling beings—they were so still and dull, without a flicker of movement beyond the tossing of the waves. When they were hauled on deck, the souls remained limp and motionless—but out of the water, they could speak. They poured out madness.

The men would hear their ceaseless sobbing and gibbering, and imagine the hell of long decades drifting in the sea beyond the protection of the _Dutchman_ until what life they had in them ran out and all that was left was the mind, alone, powerless. The souls were cold and sodden, heavier than any human had a right to be, white-fleshed, helpless as paralytics and pitiful as raving old women in their beds: wiry sailors, mostly, grizzled men so like the crew that they saw themselves lying mad and motionless in the hold.

"Shut the blitherin' ye thrice-damned twat," snarled Gilbert, hefting a wailing boy over his shoulder. His cries were long, wordless, wavering, and cut above the shivery drone of the other dead like a bagpipe's whistle.

Captain Turner, glancing down from the aftcastle, caught Coombs' bark and grimaced in frustration.

It was impossible, all impossible. A hideous state. The dead—ancestors, uncles, grandfathers, brothers before the mast—were ruined and burned out with misery, more helpless than infants and a dozen times the burden, and no one could spare them so much as a kind word as they were laid belowdecks in the hurry to shuttle them to land.

And so many. In places, the water was choked with them, but for the most part, the Undersea was so vast that they could sail days without sighting a shoal. They were stripped of all hope and dignity, with only the _Dutchman_ to look to, and his men…his men disappointed him.

He slumped.

"Her again?"

Turner jerked upright. Bootstrap was leaning next to him on the rail, looking a bit nervous, or perhaps that was the sweat from running about below picking up fish. Family or not, the man was so sneaky it was bloody terrifying. He seemed to do it by accident.

Recovering, Will tried to think of the question.

"No," he replied, surprised at the realization. He glanced at his father, who looked away and shifted uncomfortably. He checked the rigging, nets, and boats again, before realizing that Bootstrap might be waiting for some kind of response. He swallowed. "I was…wondering if I'd done the right thing."

"Wiv Gilbert?"

"Yes."

Bootstrap frowned, and Will tensed, uncertain if he was ready for Bootstrap's honesty. "We best take this t'the cabin," he said at last, watching Maccus glower at them from the deck.

* * *

Gilbert's not a horrible person; he's just really bad with kids. 

Sailors sure do make some pretty bell-ropes. They double as clubs. "Sennits," which is an all-encompassing word for braids of any complexity is pronounced "sinnays." I think.

Lying in the waters of the dead for years would make anyone go mad. Credit goes to Emma3 for her (eerily prescient, considering she started her trilogy before AWE) picture of bodies floating in the waters of the dead, from which I stole the idea that the water would sap souls' strength and will.

The dead lying in the water also create their own miniature ecosystem: open-ocean fish rise to the surface under their shade, which in turn attracts predatory fish, and soon there is a transient population of not-bird food below a shoal of souls. That's right, not birds: "_not-birds._" Bird-like, only not.


	10. The Sea's Teeth

**The Sea's Teeth**

The barren vault of the organ room reared above Will's and Bootstrap's heads, and the stacks of bricks gave it the sense of a ruined abbey, or a chapel half-finished; the wails of the dead filtered through the floor. Will made as though to sit down, stopped, and paced back and forth a few steps. His stomach was trying to crawl up his lungs. "What do you think," he asked, blank-faced.

Bootstrap looked him in the eyes. His sallow face had brightened over the past months; years had dropped away; he had tidied his hair and darned his clothes; he had chatted and jostled with the other sailors. But as for his son, he would nod to him with professional reserve; Will was burdened, he knew, and would not, as he supposed from his own experience, care to be bothered.

Today, Will saw a haunted look in his father that he had not seen since Jones, a look that froze him to his toes.

"The men are worryin'," Bootstrap began. "I cannot say if lashing Gilbert were right or wrong, if you brought him to the mast for good discipline or spite—_you_ know, you decide for yourself. Fourteen strokes is no evil to a tarry ox like him."

"So why do the men worry?" Will asked, and Bootstrap saw again those dreadful sincere trusting brown eyes, the sight he feared and longed for years ago, each time he saw London in the distance. Eyes looking to him—_him!—_for wisdom.

"They need to know," said Bootstrap slowly, forcing himself to face his son, "whose captain you are. Pirates—Jack, Hector—they be the crew's captain, leastways if they know what's good for 'em. That was how Hector got Jack ousted, you know—Jack was trying to be his own captain, and the crew wouldn't have it; it's the way o'things. Davy Jones, he was Calypso's captain, so I hear, then, after that…that business, he was his own. The men meant nothin', what we said meant nothin'. Justice and mercy, nothin'. It was just a bitter old man and his whims, it were. And we couldn't think to shove Jones off on some rumrunner's island, couldn't such as _think_ it, understand."

Will nodded, the implication beginning to sink in. "And the same goes for me."

"That it does. Now that we're stuck with you, we need to know—are you the crew's captain, or are you your own?" Bootstrap watched Will with pity in his sad face.

"I am the crew's captain," said Will firmly.

Bootstrap smiled, warmed with relief and a spark of unearned pride in the man before him. "Good."

_Clack_.

Will jumped and turned around. The spirits in the hold had gone silent.

Glowing like a pearl in the shadow of one of the brick stacks sat a round white cobblestone. Frowning, he knelt and picked it up: it was smooth and dry, while the organ-room was still sopping from the recent dive. He glanced up at the boards overhead, then at Bootstrap, who was standing in the exact same attitude as before the noise. "Did you see," Will began. Bootstrap did not move or blink, and was staring vacantly over Will's shoulder. "Father!" Will waved a hand in front of his eyes and shook him by the shoulder; Bootstrap swayed, but remained frozen.

"Ovah here," said a voice behind him.

He spun, furious. "Calypso," he snapped. "Release him. What did you do?"

Something crunched on his fingers, and he hissed and dropped the white rock. It scuttled over the deck and seemed to fragment, multiplying into a few dozen tiny, legged pebbles that swarmed over the bare feet of the stern, savage girl who had appeared before the organ's dark footprint. Will averted his eyes; she was completely nude.

"Release him?" she mocked, reflecting Will's own voice back at him, making it petulant, childish. "We keep this, hm, private, or you want you father ta see?"

"What do you want?"

She frowned and padded toward him, growing with each step until Will had to crane his head up not to look at her breasts. She quirked an eyebrow at him, and the white crabs scuttled across her skin and multiplied until they covered her—barely. "You take little time to tear out my man' pipes from my ship," she grated, with a growl behind her voice like breakers booming in a sea cave. Will thought he could see reefs and seabeds in the blackness of her teeth; with each word, her hair swayed nearly to knock against his forehead. "You fixin' ta stay, Captain Turnah?"

"Ten years is a long time," said Will, holding his ground. He had little idea why his commander had come to berate him in person, and did not much care.

"Eternity be far longa," said Calypso, the shadow of a moray eel passing across her left eye.

"Elizabeth will be there for me," Will snapped. "She is not you."

"Truly so?" the goddess asked, grinning wide. "I thought you_ knew_ her. But if she be waitin', just as I'd be waitin' for Davy Jones on t'othah turn o' de tide, will you be dere, I wondah."

Will seethed. "You will not keep me from her! I keep my bargains. For ten years I will ferry the dead—"

"De _dead!_" Calypso roared, and with a wave of her arm she sent Will slamming against a bulkhead under the curl of an icy breaker. Will scrambled to his feet. "For ten year, you carry de spirits of de dead! _Dat_ be de bargain, William Turnah, dat be de _duty,_ yah duty!" Another wave beat him to the floor, and a rain of rock and oysters battered him and sliced at his hands. "De living be my realm!"

"And you would have me leave them there?" Will shouted. "Those men would have died without rescue. I would not kill them!"

Calypso blackened and blurred, her face and hair as distant as a storm cloud. "Dey be _my_ prey, Turnah, my right! I decree who live and die on de waves. Dey belong to de sea! You neglect you duty, ta hindah mine own."

"Then what would you have me do?" Will demanded through gritted teeth.

Calypso condensed, becoming again the marsh-witch he had first met. "You dredge up de spirits here," she ordered. "When you feel de pull o' de boats, when you must sail de living sea, you stop for _no-thing_. Ev'ry hour you tarry be an hour you pay ta see you dear love. You serve me faithful now, you will see her on de day."

"And if I refuse?"

She smiled now, the smile of a hunter on the trail of a sly wolf. "De same. And from de ship, I take back my protection."

"What protection?" Will asked.

"What protection Davy Jones lack," said Calypso, waving an imperious hand at Will's father.

His face was almost lost in a column of coral reef that had sprung up from the boards around his feet. Will lunged to his side and gripped what was left of his arm. Bootstrap was still oblivious, and for that he was somewhat thankful. Polyps bit into his fingers; he could see through his father's head.

"Dis not be new ta him, remembah?"

Will spun around, drawing his sword. The room swam oddly in his eyes. "Change him back."

"Hee," laughed Calypso, disappearing into a swaying fog. "An you not even notice yahself yet."

He glanced at his hand, and his fist tightened around the hilt: white crab-toe talons, a wrist slick and mottled with eel-gray and veined with stark tube-worms fanning blood-red plumes. His eyes wouldn't blink, and he ran a sharpened tongue over long sharp teeth; he felt very cold and wet to the pit of his soul, as though he could never be dry again. "What do you want, Calypso?" Will shouted, hoarse, as the fog circled him like an eye-wall and flickered with shadows of sharks and spider-crabs.

The fog flared and vanished. "Yah choice," said her voice in his ear, making him slice at his right. The blade whistled.

"William?" his father asked, and Will gasped with relief and sheathed his sword; his father was well, they both were well, and Calypso had left them alone.

Bootstrap blinked, trying to clear the muzziness in his head. The organ room suddenly smelled like a tide pool, William was soaking wet and panting, and his vision had jumped as though he'd been hit. He grabbed his son by the shoulder. "William, what happened?"

Captain Turner straightened and took a breath, the sight of his father dissolving again into the sea flickering behind his eyes. "It is…nothing to concern yourself for," he said quietly. "Father, if you would, return to your watch."

Bootstrap felt a cold sweat break out on his back. William never called him "Father" when all was well. He dug into his pocket and drew out the barnacle. "I found this growing inside the hold, Captain." He watched as William took it, stared at it in the palm of his hand, and smothered it in a trembling fist. "Thought y'ought to see it."

"Thank-you," Will said with a sickened smile. "Go on, Mr. Turner. If anyone asks, I will turn topside shortly."

Bootstrap shut the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, listening to the soft shuffle of boots and the singing of a sword.

* * *

Okay. I tried Calypso's accent. Tomorrow I'll go motocross racing without a helmet. Catastrophic failure looks about as likely either way.

Thoughts?


	11. Captain Turner Decides

**Captain Turner Decides  
**

Will lunged through the points of the compass, dropping until one knee nearly touched the floor as he flicked with his saber, and springing back upright to turn a quarter and lunge again. The blood burned in his throat and his legs trembled as though he had run a mile; it was so rare for him now to feel properly roused, let alone tired. He doubted this heat, born of anger and fear, would feel as sweet in the end as simple exertion.

It had been difficult to lose himself in his practice since the first incident with Jack Sparrow: instead of pirates he had seen at hangings charging at him with diabolical snarls and basic naval swordcraft, now his imagined foes were in uniform like as not; they had names; their dispositions were ironic or sanguine or fearful; some hammered his defense with raw and desperate force while others flicked carelessly and surely into his vitals like water flowing through a cattle wade; at his defeat—and even in his mind, he was frequently gutted, slashed in the neck or eye, maimed, or stabbed—they crowed or sneered or passed on grimly, as character dictated. Practice had grown shorter and more worrying. He himself had improved.

Now it was Calypso standing in front of him, smirking lasciviously and fading like smoke in front of his sword.

Will so rarely saw any dilemmas in his life, but now he had one.

Two.

Three.

In the corner of his eye he would imagine a pillar of reef, and think of the broken thing his father had been that last day, when he himself was free; he would think of the ships—_Evangeline, Bon Venue, Hildegard, Phoebe Groene—_and the dead he would have met had he abandoned them to Calypso's mercy; he would think of Elizabeth his bride, terrible and loving, who had so inexplicably bound her wild self to him; he would stoop on the deck and thrust with the saber as his wrist grew clumsy and his footsteps sharp and furious.

He owed the men on wrecked ships nothing. To Elizabeth, he owed his everything, and to his father he owed protection. Still, he could not cast the sailors aside; there were so many of them, and they were what he had thought his father had been: brave, honest men—though Bootstrap certainly was that—making their way in the world, just as he had as a simple apprentice. If only he were widowed and orphaned, he thought with a shudder, he would be free to choose their side; Calypso's curse was but a nuisance to the captain—in the scheme of things—and if only his father were not part of his crew…

And he remembered his hours-old promise to Bootstrap, and found a fourth party with a claim on his honor. He let his sword drop, and he sat.

* * *

"Father," he said. 

In the hold, Bootstrap jumped and spun around, the lantern in his hand spraying laughing shadows on the walls. William stood before him, stepping out of a bulkhead. He seemed pained.

"I understand now," said William. Bootstrap watched him, waiting, wondering what their conversation had wrought in him, until his son continued. "Why you gave me those lashes, why you did not stand in Jones' way. I am sorry."

"Son," said Bootstrap, puzzled, for he still felt the shame of that day. Like many things, it had passed behind them undiscussed.

William turned back to the wall. "Some things cannot be fought," he said, and he walked into the wall and disappeared.

* * *

At the changing of the bells, Will called all hands on deck, briefly explained Calypso's threat, and announced that the _Dutchman_ would no longer transport living passengers. With no sound but the murmur of the dead and the crash of the sea, Captain Turner retired to the organ room, and Maccus commanded the port watch.

* * *

Starboard watch, standing in the dark under the hammocks, was stunned by the decree. Gilbert Coombs broke the quiet—for while the souls were still weeping and groaning in the hold, there could be no silence on the ship—with a spiteful snarl. "Why that meddlin' wh—" 

"Shut it!" hissed another voice. "You want to bring the Sea Wi—the Sea Woman down on us all?"

"Well, if the good Captain's too—"

"Shut it about the Captain! Just shut it, Gil! It's done. Captain's word."

Gilbert shut it.

* * *

Enjoy a windy pontificating author's note. Today's essay is about ethics! Will's fuzzy and contradictory ethics!

Jack Sparrow Logic has nothing on Will Turner Logic. He gets called a puppy quite a bit by detractors, which actually fits because he reckons duty and loyalty like a dog. Will has lists. Elizabeth is on the list; Norrington and the laws of the Crown are not. Jack Sparrow was on the list after their first adventure; after his back-stabbing in DMC, he was not. Bootstrap is on the list. Calypso, as of right now, is off the list. The stranded sailors in the middle of the ocean, though . . . I don't think Will has any justification within his current moral framework for helping them, besides natural decency. This is causing him a bit of a problem. He can't put everybody in the world on his friends list, but he hates the thought of leaving them to die. He solves this dilemma by re-evaluating his lists: who is he _bound_ to take care of? That trumps every other concern. The crew comes first.

I hope this short chapter made up for its brevity in that it finally clears up (as far as I'm concerned) why Will was so mad at Bootstrap for lashing him in DMC. In the movie, it looked like Will was just being stupid---stupider than most twelve-year-olds---which is a little much to believe, even though he's not terribly perceptive. But suppose Will was mad at Bill for not standing up for what he believed was right?


	12. Once a Bosun

**Once a Bosun**

The _Dutchman_ sagged in the water as she drove toward what was left of the pier.

"Mister Jones, Mister Chattroy, stand by to drop the sea anchor on my command," said Captain Turner, who had the ship approaching the rotting pilings much faster than either he or Maccus liked.

There had been a pier, many many decades ago, built from the strange fronded trees that shaded the rocky shore before them. Beyond the pier was a stone wall twenty feet high, with stairs that sloped toward the water, an open archway, and guard towers here and there from which small fires smoked. A man in a chainmail doublet and dented iron helmet waved madly at them from the nearest tower, and from the crow's nest, Jimmylegs waved nervously back at him. The guard jumped up and down, and disappeared back under his roof. "Old nutter," Jimmylegs muttered.

Every pier was different—the shores all varied in their texture and topography, and in the mixture of Earthly and alien plants that greened the soil, and the piers were sometimes half-intact, sometimes completely missing, sometimes in the form of a sturdy stone jetty—but always, there was a stone wall carrying a footpath along its crest, dotted with towers and batty human-looking guards. This guard was called Holler-Hidey, who would wave and shout until he caught someone's attention, then dart out of view like a whipped dog.

"Drop!" said the Captain, and Tom Larekey and eight-fingered Peter Jones heaved a bundle of rope and canvas out over the stern railing to open in the water like a bucket as it dragged along. Its cable drew taut and the ship flinched backward. The ruined pilings stabbed up from the surf, and the men at the side threw loops of hawser around them as they passed. The ship bucked as the first hawser jerked it back, drawing an angry squawk from the timbers and tilting the piling in the seabed.

The hatch to the main hold was already open, a cluster of the burliest sailors ringed a platform on a hoist, and a spar had been slung into position as a crane. Below, they were laying the pale, limp bodies of the dead men on the platform's surface, packing them like lumber, heaving arms and legs safely into place before calling "haul away" to the men on deck with the pulley line, and finally dragging a second platform into place for the next lift.

The souls were quieter, near the land with the smells of plants—strange plants, but plants—and of rocks and surf and seaweed. They murmured more soberly. If they shrieked or gibbered, the despair was missing. Some of them would ask, quite sensibly, what port they had made, whether it was Heaven or Hell or someplace else. The sailors would lower a platform to float where a landing party tread water, waiting to swim it to the stairs and heave the souls to land; and then the wonderful thing, the one truly good, warming thing about serving on a strange sea in a ship with the same men for decades and no hope to make port at home or abroad ever again, would happen: the dead would come alive again.

When they touched land, they would blink, or twitch their lips and fingers, or shiver. Then they would gasp. In a minute they would sit up, laugh or cry or bellow things like "Huzzah!" or "Sweet Bonny, I'm comin' home!" and then they would stand and lend strong, roughened hands to hauling up the other corpses, and soon the stairway would be crowded with rejoicing men, who before had lain pale and mad and gibbering in the hold.

* * *

The crew was busy unloading for the rest of the evening. Captain Turner, instead of putting a hand in—swimming with the platform on the water or steadying it as it swung across the deck, as was his habit—never moved from the stern. He stared absently into the forest as the dead men staggered to their feet and laughed in the lush, vigorous air; he left the crew to run their own business as he scraped the wood of the railing with one thumbnail. A small gray not-bird whirred past his head, and he hunched into himself. The light danced on the frondy leaves beyond the shoreline, etching swimming tangles into the backs of his eyes, the wind teased his hair, and he stood like a moldy rock.

* * *

With most of the crew busy in one task or another, Jimmylegs had seized the opportunity of the anchorage to scurry down from the crow's nest, belowdecks, and into the galley. The smell of fresh fish caught at him: one of the funny ones they often found in the Undersea, probably scooped up with the dead in the net. It was a fore-arm's length, heavy-headed, hanging by its jaw from a small hook in the ceiling in case anyone wanted it. Jimmylegs, after a solid week with nothing to do but stare at the ship and the horizon, and nothing to eat for the past month, wanted that fish badly. He grabbed it by the tail, drew his belt knife, and sliced off a long fillet.

Someone clattered past the galley, and Jimmylegs pressed himself to the wall. Deciding that it would be bad for his health to be found skulking about belowdecks, he chewed on the fillet, scraping the sweet meat off the scales with his teeth, and clumped toward the stairs. A board creaked, and he spun, fish in his mouth like a dog, to see Greenbeard and Ogilvey Fergus step out of the shadows. He backed up the stairs, but Greenbeard, now tall and straight-backed, with stern lined Danish features, grabbed his elbow in a stony paw. Jimmylegs managed a nervous smile.

"What'you got that little sticker out for?" Ogilvey fairly purred, eyeing Jimmy's belt knife. "T'ain't no way wise t'carry it about like that, not sneaking about below, ts'not." He shot cold, glittering cat's eyes at Greenbeard, who shared the look. "Man might think sommat afoot, he might."

Ogilvey caught Jimmy's other elbow and pried the knife from his hand. The fillet dropped to the floor.

Greenbeard bared his teeth. "Ogie. See that, Bosun made a mess to clean up. How then," he said, looming over Jimmy's pale face. "Shall we bend our backs and clean that up, Bosun? You want to see us turn our backs on you? Finally come down from your little perch to have some fun, did you, little Bosun?"

Ogilvey hissed, and helped Greenbeard swing Jimmy around to slam his face against the hull. Jimmylegs' knees buckled, and he whimpered.

"Naughty pup," Ogilvey murmured. "I've a mind to call Quittance on ye, ye little sneak, 'cept he's got such a _humanly_ hand on th'whip."

"Eye for an eye," growled Greenbeard. "You know the Bible, don't you, little Bosun? Time to right some wrongs, methinks. Ogie, fetch a plank. And a rope."

Ogilvey grinned with hate in his eyes, and let Greenbeard grab Jimmy's other wrist before he tromped off into the dark. Jimmylegs flinched at Greenbeard's breath over his head, and with a buck like a frightened calf, threw himself upright, catching Greenbeard's chin with his skull and stomping on the arch of his foot. The other man grunted in pain, and Jimmy elbowed him in the ribs and spun away, leaping up the steep stairs to burst back onto the deck. Greenbeard was behind him in an instant, and Jimmylegs barely made it to the rail before he caught him, twisting one fist in his hair and bending an elbow behind his back.

"Cap'n!" squawked Jimmy, hoarse. "Cap'n!"

Captain Turner looked down at him with hooded eyes, then looked down at his own hands, as though caught in some internal muddle.

"Cap'n, help!" Jimmylegs panted, as Greenbeard cranked on his arm.

Captain Turner blinked and observed the scene. He seemed lank, defeated, as the crew had never seen him before. "Sort it out yourselves," he said, and returned to staring at the trees.

Jimmylegs stomped, kicked, scratched Greenbeard across the face, and flew to the ratlines, skimming up like a frightened squirrel to curl once again into the crow's nest, out of sight. Greenbeard wiped blood off his cheek as Ogilvey caught up to him, holding a club and a length of worn-out lashing. "We'll get him when he crawls down," he muttered.

"_If_ he crawls down," said Ogilvey, swinging the rope around his fist. "T'was me, I'd stay 'till th'last trump an' kingdom come."

High on the mast, Jimmylegs saw his future, confined to the rigging until all who had known him from Jones' crew passed on or he dared to leave the ship for death. Without the Captain's protection, he was safe nowhere else.

* * *

At sunset, as the _Dutchman_ slipped away from the pier, the dead men on the stairs sat watching the trackless woods, dabbling their feet in the water, and little by little, they ventured up the high road to wherever it was they were going, where the ancient guards pointed the way.

* * *

A sea anchor on a fluyt? I really don't know. They screwed up the timing pretty bad to need a parachute as they ploughed up to the pilings.

So, welcome to the hell that is Jimmylegs' new life. Remember, people: Solar plexus! Instep! Nose! Groin!

More Will angst looming ahead.


	13. Holystones

**Holystones**

As Jimmylegs begged him for help, Will had turned his eyes from the dancing, whispering trees, seen the vengeance printed on Greenbeard's face, and whispered to himself, under the echoes of his own announcement that the Dutchman would take no more hand in the perils of the living, under the echoes of his surrender: _I have no right_.

He spent more and more time against the rail of the aftcastle, letting the wind and rain sink through his coat and watching the crew work the ship. Though he watched, he often had little idea what tack they were on at a given time; he grew lost in movement, in the scurrying motions, in the pulsing tug of teams on heaving lines, in the hiss and purl of the wake. He avoided the organ room, and felt too detached from the men to venture elsewhere below. Though Will stayed on deck day and night, Maccus ran the ship.

Weeks dragged.

They had crossed the living sea to dive and break out of the water in another quarter of the Undersea, done some trawling, and brought more souls to the nearest piers, when Will felt the pull of boats.

"Boats across Africa," he told Maccus, walking out of a mast nearby and startling him. Will paid no notice to his first mate's twitch, but turned around and went back to the aftcastle the way he'd come.

Maccus was disturbed. The Captain was fixed to the aftcastle as though he'd grown into it, which was impossible as the _Dutchman_ had never been cleaner and drier and shinier than it was now; he would not take command and had no interest in learning the rigging and run; his usual distance from the crew had turned from smiling courtesy to something miserable and inhospitable as a barren oak tree in November sleet. The Captain had become predictable. The Captain was not himself.

His constant presence was a shadow on the souls of the ship and the crew.

"Ready about!" Maccus barked, and he guided the ship over the sea to another crumbling pier, conducted the landing of the souls they'd found, and stood at the bow night and day until they left the shore far behind. As the Captain did not stir, Maccus himself gave the order to dive, and down they sank into the black cold where the water pressed down stronger than man could imagine, where fish glowed like fireflies and the water reeked of must and decay.

They surfaced into chill, screaming air, but the wind was at their stern, so they rode atop the water instead of sheltering under it. They'd changed the watches but once before Maccus noticed the Captain leave the rail and begin pacing; he kept at it, sweeping back and forth across the stern, shoulders stiff, wide-eyed as he stared at the deck, for most of an hour before Maccus took action.

"Quittance, keep an eye on 'er," he told the boatswain, then stalked to the hatch and dropped below. He clomped along in the dark, peering at the hammocks, before he found the one he wanted and dumped its occupant to the planks. Bootstrap was on his feet and gripping him roughly by the back of the neck in half a breath; Maccus flinched in surprise. "Easy, Bootstrap," he said gruffly.

"Firs' mate," Bootstrap acknowledged, dropping his hand. "What's this about?"

"Cap'n's gone twitchy. Find out what 'tis, an' report to me."

"Find out? He's not speakin'. What makes you think he'd say?" hissed Bootstrap, quailing at the thought of invading another man's privacy.

"Dammit, man, he's your son!" Maccus snarled, waking men in nearby hammocks. Just as it was common knowledge that Turner and Turner were related, the crew knew that their first mate hated the idea of family serving one under the other, and did his best to ignore the relationship. Maccus pulled himself taller and scowled at the faces in the dark. "Get up and ask him," he muttered to Bootstrap, before stomping back up to the deck.

Bootstrap did.

Maccus watched from across the deck as the older Turner caught his Captain by the coat, halting his pacing for an instant. They seemed to speak together, their heads bent so briefly that Maccus almost missed it, then the Captain straightened himself, and Maccus had the wild hope that he would wake up, look around at the crew and truly see them again, and return to his rightful role as their commander. But he did not; he merely stopped pacing and returned to his space at the railing. Bootstrap left his son and crossed the deck to Maccus. "Ship's goin' down," he explained shortly, and made to return below.

Gilbert Coombs, busy holystoning nearby, had caught Bootstrap's report, and shoved himself to his feet. "An' we're to run by with deaf ears," he snapped. "All 'cause our cap'n's too coward feared o' that sea hag."

"Stow it!" Maccus snarled in his face, showing his teeth and whipping out a blackjack from his belt. "To yer labor!"

Coombs met Maccus' hot black eyes with heady amusement, and returned, slowly, to his knees.

"If ye think that of him," said Bootstrap coldly, "ask him yerself."

"I think I will!"

"Ye'll stow it an' scrape that deck 'till a babe's buttocks could slide from rail to rail with nary a splinter!" shouted Maccus. "Scrape, ye bitch-poster, lest ye want a blue egg on yer shit-stuffed skull! Maybe that'd knock the shit-mettle out o' it! Nought else has!"

Coombs narrowed his eyes. "O'course, firs' mate," he said, tapping his fist to his forehead. "Jus' let me scrape o'er this way." And with that, he bent his knees, got a good grip on each end of the holystone, heaved it onto his chest with a grunt, and stumped toward the aftcastle.

Maccus looked ready to kick his knees out from under him, when Bootstrap stepped between them, head hanging tense, eyes grim. Maccus hefted the blackjack. "Same goes fer you," he growled. But he looked over Bootstrap's shoulder at Captain Turner staring hollowly at him, and stayed his hand.

Coombs reached the aft stairs and managed to stagger up them, feeling his way with his feet as his face reddened with strain. He slammed the stone to the deck with a boom that echoed through the whole ship, and bent over his knees, panting. "Oy, mates!" he shouted when he'd recovered. "I'm about to earn me another stip at the masthead; be some decent if all o' ye know what I'm bleedin' for!" He kicked the holystone over to Captain Turner.

"I heard what you said, Mr. Coombs," said Will, staring through him.

"An' am I right, Cap'n?" Coombs demanded, one foot on the holystone and standing far closer than was proper.

"To your labor!" shouted Maccus from the deck, and Coombs spun around and snapped back, "Don't innerupt me talkin' to the cap'n!"

Will spoke again, beginning to prop himself off the rail and stand again. "I made a promise to look after the crew of this ship. Should I run more rescues, the curse would fall on all of you, again."

"Cap'n, if I may speak me mind, cap'n," said Coombs, glaring.

"Speak, man," Will snapped.

"Yer not feared to be cursed, yeself?"

"No."

"Ye sure it weren't for yer lady love?"

"Elizabeth would understand," said Will grimly. "Some day."

"An' it weren't for Old Bootstrap, there, neither?"

"Not him alone."

"So it were for the crew."

"I said as much!"

Coombs took a step back, recalling the punch his Captain had thrown at the wall of the organ room. Captain Turner's brow was tight, and his eyes had grown fierce. "Cap'n," Coombs continued, "ye gave me six stripes for lyin' to ye down in that room. I gather we're to tell the honest truth on this ship, and I'd be lyin' to say it weren't full-on King Saul's arrogance of ye to make a choice for the crew without first askin' the crew's own choice!"

Will blinked at the violence of Coombs' tone.

Coombs stripped off his shirt and turned his marred back on him. "Get on, then. Insubordination, aye? Five? Forty? Oy, Quittance! Yer needed!"

"Put that back on," said Will. "To your work." He stepped away from the rail so Coombs could scrub the boards where he had been standing.

"When's the cat come play?" asked Coombs, dressed again and squatting before the holystone.

"Not for this," said Will irritably. He shook his arms out and bounced a little on his feet. "Mr. Maccus, is the crew free?" he demanded.

Maccus glanced around the ship; the sails were set and the weather was steady, if harsh and whistling. "Aye, Captain! She'll spare us some minutes."

"Call them all up. All hands!"

"All hands on deck!"

* * *

I made up Maccus' insults after skimming the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Hopefully they sound "period," because they probably aren't actually. Yes, he repeats himself. He's no Shakespeare.

According to I Samuel, King Saul became unfit in his position in the eyes of the Lord when he let greed and glory lead him to disobey divine orders. Rather the opposite of Will's decision, at least on the surface.


	14. Captain Turner and the Crew

**Captain Turner and the Crew**

The whole crew tumbled out of their hammocks, some with Maccus' forceful assistance, and assembled on deck. Seeing Gilbert standing by the Captain, many expected they had come to witness another whipping.

"I have a question to ask you all," shouted Will from the stair. "I want your decision."

The crew stared back at him, cautious, surprised. Maccus smothered his face in his hands.

"I made a promise to be the crew's captain," Will explained to them all, "to serve you. I thought it my duty to defy my conscience to spare you Calypso's curse. But I failed to ask after your own minds."

Bootstrap spoke up, quietly, from the rail. "How do you mean, the crew's captain?"

Will bowed his head and thought, the eyes of the crew lighting over him like darts glancing off a boulder. He could have been sitting on the moon, for all he noticed them. "My decisions will be for the crew," he announced. "I will seek your counsel and approval in ship's matters."

There was a murmur of consternation from the former merchant and navy men, and a murmur of approval from the former pirates.

"No one will be above the crew's justice, myself included. If I have done any man wrong," he said, eyes on Coombs, "I will accept your judgment."

"He's Bootstrap's boy, all right," snorted Koleniko.

Maccus jabbed him with his elbow, and whispered to himself, "But command! Will the boy command? God help us!"

"We will have justice on this ship," Will continued, following the road he had set for himself, step by step without knowing the end, "and I will defend what I believe to be right, but my position does not justify compulsion." He ceased, and the crew stared back at him for many breaths.

"Am I right in sayin'," asked Pip Finn, "ye figure stoppin' for dyin' men a right thing?"

Will bowed his shoulders. "Were I alone, I would do it," he said quietly. "But I never knew the curse. And I cannot ask such a thing of you against your will." He took a step back. "What say you all?"

A formless murmur rose and fell.

"Wyvern," someone whispered, and the word seemed to echo through the assembly. Gone. Frozen, dead, a living grave, sleeping for all to see—that, they feared.

"Nonsense," called Wyvern himself. "Have you puppies no memory? I held out longest of all; had I served nought but my sentence, I would have walked off. T'was gambling done me in."

The crew began to argue, and Will listened as they turned amongst themselves. His hand clamped the stair rail.

"Dyin' men ain't ours to mind," said Tom Larekey.

"D'ye fear death, Tom?" asked Ogilvey. Tom edged away; Ogilvey was not a safe man to be near. "I do. I'd rather fight death, eh, mates?"

"I fear death, and I fear losin' me free mind," said Ray Oreck. "Ye canna know, some men sink so fast…I wouldna bet myself." He turned his squint eyes toward Bootstrap.

Koleniko followed his glance. "Old Turner held out fine for years. T'was the shock of thinking his son dead drove him into the wall. That, and the brig."

"Before I met my son," said Bootstrap quietly, and the men fell silent, "I waited for a chance to pay back my misdeeds. When I saw the _Pearl_ go down, with him on it, so far as I saw, there was nought to hope for. I stopped fightin' the ship. I stopped fightin', and it took me."

"There was no reason to live," said Greenbeard, "not under Jones. Just to be as cussed as the old cuss himself, but there never was a reason."

The crew stirred.

"We've a reason now," Greenbeard continued, "minding the dead ones, but, ye see, there's what I wish had happened. If Jones hadn't been such a cuss, I'd've seen me neffy. Me wife might've had a little girl. Not that Calypso has a mind to such."

"Serve the old bitch right, she's the hag near drowned me in the first place!" shouted Coombs. Half the crew crossed themselves and glanced warily at the cold sea. "And Cap'n's like to let us go." He lowered his voice. "Right, Cap'n?"

Will squeezed his eyes shut until the sight of corals with his father's face dissolved in starbursts and blackness. "I will never let the ship take a man."

"Way I see it," Coombs said, "We pick 'em all up on one side or the other. At least this side, they got drinks." He listened to his mates murmur and grinned. "All in favor o' sittin' on our smooth pink arses while good men go to the depths an' Calypso sits down with 'em, cackling, 'cause she's a widowmaker on top of a heartbreaker, an' then ferry the same poor souls to those adlepates from the Crusade Wars to lead 'em home—and we all know the conversation we'll have with the fellows on the way—all in favor, aye?"

There were a good deal of glares at him, and a few men raised their voices.

Coombs was not deterred. "An' all the men here bold enough to stand a little mold and mildew, and do any decent man's work out here on this sea like it was when we was alive? Who'd pass a wreck on, any of ye? Any man of ye? All who'll go rescue the perishin' with Cap'n Turner: aye, and the devil with the old witch?"

The assembly took a breath.

"Aye!" it shouted. "Aye, Cap'n! Aye!"

Will patted Coombs on the back with astonishment, and Coombs winked at a slack-jawed Maccus before bulling his way off the stairs.

"Port watch, you may return to your berths," said Will, a weak smile leaking out. "Set sail North-North-East, and pack it on; we'll pick these men up quickly!"

As the deck cleared again, Maccus roused himself and fired off the orders, finding Captain Turner at his shoulder watching the rigging and the men and the waves, striving once again to decipher it all.

* * *

They rescued the sailors and not a man was stabbed in the process, but Coombs dropped a crate of salvage on his toe.

* * *

Coombs is a ham. I didn't think he would be when I first wrote him, but he is such a shameless ham. 

So, the new rules for the _Dutchman_: pick up stray boats, use Warp 10 as much as possible, and only grab what you can take before the ship is ready to run. At least the angst is over!

It might be hard to tell, since this story is a seamless unit in the same way that a house with five additions is a single building, but we're closing in on the end. Just a few more chapters.


	15. The Pine Tree

**The Pine Tree**

A month later, and they cruised the Undersea. They had finally dealt with the crates left over from the _Birdie_, after Maccus had persuaded Captain Turner to take his share of the salvage; after all, if he abstained completely, it would seem to the crew that no one could take anything from a living ship. Turner had cracked them open with a pry bar, then suddenly dashed up from the hold with a large rust-orange object in his hands, and found Bootstrap. "Father, look!" he'd exclaimed excitedly. "Tongs!"

With the discovery of tongs came the Captain's return to the organ room, accompanied by thunks and clacks and clatters. He was in there day and night when he wasn't learning the intricacies of sailing the _Dutchman_, and often when the door was propped open, Bootstrap or some of the other crew were there, too.

The Captain had asked the crew to bring him some lumber when they stopped at one of the piers, and had chopped it into a good pile of kindling, which he stored in the lead-lined crates that were built to protect the _Birdie_'s cargo from rust. With the bricks and galley sand, Turner appeared to be building a fireplace—a tricky business when he had no mortar. Maccus had stopped trying to decipher Turner's remodeling long ago.

As Will stacked his bricks, doing his best to ignore the dampness of the woodwork and the green, lush smell that had begun to overtake the ship, to overlook the pallor creeping over himself and the crew, and the new daily ritual of scraping the bulkheads clean, and to press back against the uneasy sucking sensation and the chill in his spine that his father had told him was the pull of the ship against his spirit, he would think of Elizabeth waiting for him, and the appointment he was now all too likely to miss. When he wasn't wondering if he were truly doing the right thing, he would plan.

He had nine years left to plan, and he would spend as many of those years planning as possible.

A knock at the doorframe broke his thoughts.

Maccus stood watching him with a bemused expression. "Swarm sighted off the port bow," he announced. "Just a point off the wind."

"Are we free to fishtail for it?" asked Will, setting a brick down on his stack.

"Aye, certainly. The crew could use some action."

"As could I."

As the crew readied the rigging, Will scrubbed slime off the wheel with his slimy shirt, and wondered if he would ever be free of the stuff in the years ahead.

They bucked across the waves, slower than they had with McGraw on the way to Boston, but the weather was steadier, smoother, and infinitely more pleasant. The sun shone hot. There was a hideous stench ahead: not dead fish, more like a dead whale.

Their goal was a column of circling not-birds, which wheeled like gulls or vultures and gave harmonic, fluty cries. They were gray like seabirds, but their wings ended in sharp points and their tails were mere clipped triangles behind. As the _Dutchman_ drew near, the crew could see them diving at the water with their long snouts, coming up with a fish that they gulped down before some larger creature could snatch their catch away.

One of them, sitting on the surface, vanished with a splash, and the rest of the flock squawked in alarm and flailed away into the air.

"Cap'n, there's a log!" Greenbeard called down from the crow's nest. Will squinted ahead as he braced the wheel, the wind stinging his eyes, and wished he had his hands free to hold the spyglass. The stench had grown stronger, and he breathed through his mouth.

As they neared the base of the swarm, not-birds swirling above them and swooping curiously at the rigging, Will could see the log for himself: a huge one, a whole pine tree that had grown too near the shore when a storm swept it away. Bare branches stuck up at odd angles, roots reared above the water, and between several of the thick lower beams was a black-and-gold mass, almost like a pup-tent.

In the water, caught in the upper branches of the tree, was the source of the stench: a mighty skull the length of a man half-submerged in the waves, the limp, scavenged neck propped up by the pine. Gray and white not-birds swarmed on it, clawing and ripping at the breaks in its hide with their little teeth. The rest of the animal's bulk trailed out into the water, where it floated, swollen: steely gray-green scales stretched taut over its bloated belly, a long, muscular paddle tail, stiff flippers instead of paws, and great crimson gouges in its flanks and throat.

"Ready, heave to!" Will shouted, and with an infinitesimal turn of the wheel, brought the ship square to the wind so that they flopped back into the waves, the canted sails luffing like bedsheets and the hull dragging slack.

He left the wheel to Jimmylegs, who was recovering from a succession of thrashings the crew had voted to give him, but was now finally free to wander the ship unmolested—for the most part. Will himself had borne six stripes, not for lashing Gilbert Coombs—who did not deny stealing the knife, as he had boasted about it belowdecks before and after his whipping—but for keeping secrets from the crew. Public justice, the general agreement had been, cleared the air, and Will had accepted the crew's judgment without protest.

Will leaned over the rail, staring at the massive toothy head of the sea-crocodile—the huge, side-mounted eyes, the pointed snout, the rows of triangular white teeth in its gray gums. The water stirred beneath it, and its hind leg jerked with the worrying of unseen jaws beneath.

How, he wondered in dismay, was he to protect the _Dutchman_ from such a beast, since they seemed to be common in these waters? Harpoons would make it angry, and he doubted a blast charge would detonate under water. He recalled the war stories he'd heard from Greenbeard and the other whalers on the ship—many of the whales that killed men had not even had teeth.

Perhaps these creatures were the reason Jones had enslaved the Kraken.

"The dead are caught in the tree, Cap'n," observed a lad called Squint. Will looked away from the monster and saw the bodies of men tangled likewise in the branches toward the base of the trunk.

"Ready rowboats," Will announced. "We'll pull them out by hand."

Will and Bootstrap's boat led a fleet of four to the floating tree, nearest the bare trunk where the bark had mostly sloughed off into the water revealing sun-silvered smooth wood. As he closed with the tree, he saw that the black-and-gold mass was indeed a tent, built from two overcoats draped among the branches: one covered with brocade, the other plain. As Bootstrap scooted to the stern of the rowboat, Will leaned over the bow and reached down to retrieve a man in uniform—East India Company uniform. As he pulled, he discovered the man was tethered to the branches by a strip of broadcloth, so he drew his sword and reached out to saw the man free with the tip.

The man's clean-shaven face broke the surface, and he said excitedly, "Fish! Nice fish! Blast! Oh, Halie, you've left the lantern burning, mind the gulls, sir." Will hauled him aboard and rolled him into the bottom, where he lay motionless, still babbling about the wildlife.

The other boats had also found the men to be tethered. "Do what you can while I cut them free," called Will, and he lowered himself into the water, paddled among the branches, and climbed onto the log. Curious, he lifted the black coat up and peered into the tent.

A sharp tree branch caught him across the forehead.

Will staggered back, slipping and grabbing the beams for support, before finally jamming his knee painfully against a jagged break and stopping his fall. He looked up at the cross and club-wielding occupant of the tent.

"Bloody hell," Will and Bootstrap breathed.

The wig was gone, the cravat was binding up a bite mark on his left arm, the white shirt was torn, and the brocade coat had been repurposed as a sunshade, but the haggard man before him was undeniably James Norrington. "Mr. Turner," he said, setting the club down carefully where it would not roll into the water. "Forgive me, I had feared you were another bat."

* * *

I was thinking about saving that last paragraph for a cliff-hanger, but my conscience refused to allow it. That would be almost as cruel as killing the good ex-Commodore after less than five-minutes of screen-time. 


	16. A Test of Fortitude

**A Test of Fortitude  
**

The wig was gone, the cravat was binding up a bite mark on his left arm, the white shirt was torn, and the brocade coat had been repurposed as a sunshade, but the haggard man before him was undeniably Admiral Norrington. "Mr. Turner," he said, setting the club down carefully where it would not roll into the water. "Forgive me, I was afraid you were another bat."

Glancing up, Will realized that the not-birds did resemble bats, with their skin-sail wings and toothy muzzles. A pelican-sized one lighted on a nearby branch, twitching its sleek white fur and regarding them both with huge orange eyes, and Norrington took up his club and swiped it across the snout. It dropped in the water and thrashed its wings among the branches in a panic, finally managing to leave the tree with an affronted bugle.

Will stared at him.

Norrington stared back.

"How did you come to be here, Mr. Turner?" asked Norrington levelly.

Will stared at him for another moment, before pointing. "The_ Dutchman_. My ship."

Norrington followed his gesture and appraised the fluyt. "It looks much cleaner."

"It will get worse."

They stared again.

"You did this?" asked Will, looking about at the souls tucked among the branches of the tree.

"I did," said Norrington. "At first, we were in the boats for twenty-three days, as I recall. We saw this tree in the distance; I managed to rig sails, but it seemed the others could not stir. We moored here until the boats disappeared."

"To carry more recent dead," Will realized.

"Nothing could be done for them when I managed to drag them from the water, so I tied them here. The bats and fish seem to leave them be." He shrugged, and raised his bandaged arm. "I am evidently not so fortunate."

"When," Will swallowed, "When did you die?"

Norrington winced and rubbed his forehead. "You weren't told. Of course." He sighed and looked up again. "I died when the crew of the Empress escaped from that ship, your ship. Mr. Turner, if you are not a spectre, kindly get me off this log and find me a bottle of brandy, and if you are, just the brandy will do."

"Are you quite all right?" Will asked.

"How long ago did the Empress escape, Mr. Turner?" asked Norrington, turning around to rearrange his tent.

Will paled beneath his _Dutchman_'s pallor. "Nigh on thirteen months now."

"Then I have been lying on this log fending off bats and sea monsters, with none but the corpses of my men and the creatures of my own head for company, with neither water nor drink, for nigh on thirteen months minus twenty-three days. No, Mr. Turner, I am not all right."

Coombs yelled from a nearby boat. "Cap'n, who's the talker?"

Will was still staring at Norrington. The man looked alive, he acted alive. "I am truly sorry, Admiral."

"That title was never mine," replied Norrington.

"If you would help cut the men loose?"

"Very well."

Will and Norrington crept along the length of the pine, sawing the dead free and shoving them out toward the waiting rowboats. As he worked, Will kept glancing back at Norrington, who moved with a sort of dull complacency as though he did not really believe anything useful was happening. Will thought of the state Jack Sparrow had been in at his rescue, as he slipped into the water to pull loose a man whose legs were caught in a branch.

"Isn't that the navy boy Beckett had over us?" asked Koleniko from the nearest boat, watching Will and Norrington with interest.

Will was treading water, pulling and shoving at the dead man's weight as he tried to untangle his uniform coat from the grasp of the pine. At last he pushed him free, only to see the man caught again on the thinner branches away from the trunk. Will swam out and dragged him toward open water. "Aye," he panted, "He was."

As he started to kick back in toward the trunk, Will felt a tug on his leg, and something sucked his boot off. Surprised, he ducked his head into the water.

A face like a battering ram gaped at him from below: a brutish square nose, pin-prick eyes, hatchet-shears for teeth. It loomed wide as the mizzenmast, shining silver in the gloom.

Will gasped water as the jaws sucked open and dragged him down by the current alone. He kicked and pulled with his arms, gripping nearby branches; he felt a tug and swam away free, reaching the trunk and breaking out of the water with a shout of fear. He tried to scramble onto the log and felt unbalanced, clumsy. His left leg was not working.

He looked down.

"My leg's gone!" he bellowed, staring at the spot—the spurting blood, the clean cut, the great femur neatly clipped through.

"Put it back on, then!" shouted Bootstrap hoarsely. Will grabbed at the nearby branches and tried to haul himself upright.

"Don't move!" Norrington barked, and leapt to his side, whipping his belt from his breeches. Quick as a surgeon, he looped the belt around Will's thigh, braced his bare foot against him, and yanked. Will sat on the log, still gripping the branches as though about to dive into the water with his saber, blinking and wondering when the pain would come.

"The fish has it," Will called back, just as a hideous cramp hit him, and he clamped his teeth and hissed. The skin around the cut began to burn, the bone burned.

Norrington tied off the belt and bent to Will's ear. "Am I right in assuming that 'put it back on' was more than a cry of panic, Mr. Turner?"

Will grunted. "Captain."

"Of course. Captain," said Norrington, rolling his eyes and wondering what it was about himself that provoked that response in idiots. "Dutchmen," he shouted, standing. "There is an enormous fish, perhaps two tonnes, which has just swallowed your captain's leg. Should you wish to kill it, I advise you get harpoons and ropes, and station spearmen near the carcass of that crocodile; that seems to be what brought it here."

With that, Norrington piled the coats that had made up his tent into a cushion and sat down, watching Will pant and shudder on the log. This latest episode was by far the most entertaining hallucination he had yet had—he had many reasons to imagine William Turner losing a leg to an armored scavenger fish, though the boy's—no, the damn pirate's shock was making him ill by proximity.

The boats scooted for the _Dutchman_, where Maccus had spears and spare ropes waiting to drop down to them by the time they arrived.

Will was passing his hand back and forth through the space where his leg used to be, his reddened fingers blurring before his eyes as his thigh cramped. He folded over and pressed his face to the bark. The waves made a confused mutter in his ears, as though they were telling him something dreadfully important about his mother; oh, Mr. Brown would not be pleased with that horseshoe, certainly not. Why were the hammers out of order? He seemed to have burnt his knee, and his great-aunt was in the water laughing at him.

As the boats returned, Norrington stood up and picked his way down the log toward the dead crocodile, weaving sure-footed between the branches. Greenbeard, who had done some whaling, had dropped down to a rowboat along with the weapons, convinced the other oarsmen to pack eight to a boat, and now stood at the bow, harpoon in hand, tense for a fight. "Wait for it to come for the carrion," Norrington called. "And do not try to spear it in the head; aim for the flanks."

There was a splash near the boat, and the men jumped from their benches, nearly capsizing, and then they set up a storm of curses at the size of the thing below them.

"And do try to keep out of the water," Norrington finished. "It may swallow you whole."

"Thankee for warning us!" snarled one of the men.

The carcass began to jiggle again, and Greenbeard peered down into the water and hefted the spear. His arm jerked, and the water exploded.

"Hold fast!" he roared above the white mane of spray that foamed high above the boat, and then a fat lobed tailfin broke the waves and slammed down with a crack like a cannon, missing the boat by an arm's length and swamping it with a fresh splash. The fish took off, and the harpoon's rope played out with a whiz, as the crew prepared for a mad sleigh-ride over the waves dragged behind the frightened animal—but instead, the rope halted. Greenbeard stood frozen at the bow, shoulders drooping. "We lost it."

Norrington stepped onto a submerged branch and lowered his face to the water. "The beast is hiding under the tree," he announced, and the crew cheered in relief.

"Not like a bloody whale, God's truth," muttered Greenbeard. He cupped his hands to his mouth and turned toward the _Dutchman._ "Bring her over here!" he shouted. "We'll put more pins in him and haul him up by the windlass!"

After three hours of work, in which Will stopped breathing entirely as he lay at the bottom of Bootstrap's rowboat, the crew managed to tether the fearsome creature to the _Dutchman_, stick their motley arsenal of spears in it, and draw it out of the water by a cable cinched around its tail. It hung, twitching, between the bowsprit and the keel, a length of chain sewn through its lower jaw—the bony shears sliced right through rope. Norrington had watched the proceedings with cool amusement, Greenbeard with impatience at his mates' amateurism.

The entire crew hung over the forward railing, marveling at the storm-and-silver bulk with its mean, scaly black eyes and its fleshy fins, and above all at the mighty jaws that stretched from gill to gill: the fish had a beak like a demonic turtle, all blades and sleek edges. Its whole head was shrouded in the same tough surface, and it was scarred and scraped by a host of fangs.

Greenbeard refused the honor of slitting its pale belly, so it was Clanker, in a boat all to himself, who raised a sharp sword and carved the fish end to end, spilling churning entrails like flabby white pythons over his shoulders. In its crop they found four whole not-birds, bushels of crocodile meat, a lemon shark, a boot, and their Captain's leg.

* * *

So, in case anyone's wondering what the heck is with that armored fish, and the not-birds, and the sea-crocodile . . . uh . . . (hides behind an upturned table) Welcome to Dinotopia, mates? 

Specifically, the sea monsters are a _Dunkeleosteus,_ various pterosaurs, and a giant mosasaur. (I watch too much Discovery Channel.) Saying that the Undersea didn't get as many extinctions as the living sea is just an excuse to steal utterly awesome monsters from real life instead of making up my own.

Disclaimer: I do not own the wildlife of the Devonian, Triassic, or Cretaceous periods. All rights belong to God, please do not smite.

Oh, and another note. We notice that Davy Jones can take a sword through the chest without so much as blinking, but he seems to shout in pain (or just anger?) when Jack cuts his finger off. I put this stoicism down to lots of will-power and experience on Jones' part, instantaneous healing across the edges of a cut, and certain areas (tissues under the skin) just not having many nerves. Adrenaline goes a long way in keeping anyone from noticing an injury, too.

Part of Will's problem here comes from the basic nature of muscles: all they do is pull. With nothing to resist the pulling, like a tendon that runs to the end of the next bone, any attempted movement will just make them contract tighter and tighter, much more than they were ever designed to do: thus, cramping. His other problem is that the other half of the wound is missing. I'm taking a liberty to say that the Captain's powers of self-preservation mostly run in the closing-of-cuts area, not in the regeneration area, for arcane reasons that Doctor Strange could probably explain all about.

So, Will is now in the position of any old Joe who just lost his leg above the knee, except he can't actually die.


	17. On The Dead Road

**On the Dead Road**

"I see it was not another fever dream," remarked Norrington the next day. He was standing on the aftcastle, trying to block his mind against the death-crazed ramblings of the souls of the men who had served under him, now lying feet-to-shoulder in the hold.

"Would that it was," Will muttered. "Thank-you for stepping in; my men told me what happened."

Will stood, or rather, leaned heavily on the stern railing, nearby: he had regained consciousness that night under the eyes of Bootstrap and Koleniko, and found that his leg had been splinted back in position and that he could wiggle all his toes. The delight and relief he felt at finding himself whole for the day he would return to Elizabeth was blunted to almost nothing by the blood loss: even now he was still dizzy, likely to faint if he moved about too much, and everything from his lips to his fingernails was white and clammy. Norrington supposed he'd failed to secure the tourniquet properly. "Where are we headed, Captain Turner?" he asked, still barely comprehending that that title belonged with the blacksmith's name.

"To the nearest pier, to send off the dead," said Will. "You, I've no idea."

"They will be at peace?" asked Norrington tightly.

"I believe so."

"You say I present a problem," Norrington prodded him.

"Aye. The dead we rescue from the water are all like you saw, in the hold now. If we reach them still in the boats, they still have their reason, but they never act like live men, they do nothing unless the crew tells them. The…the birds leave them be."

Norrington rubbed the bite under his bandage.

"Yet you survived on that log for over a year."

"Time ran strangely," Norrington said. He swallowed and shut his eyes. "You rescue the dead? This is the _Dutchman_'s proper mission?"

Will snorted, choked, and sank to the deck cackling, as his dizzy brain found Norrington's words outrageously funny. He huddled there for nearly a minute, shaking, and then stopped and slowly sat up, gripping his head and blinking rapidly as blackness swam over his eyes. "We rescue the living, as well," he said, soberly as though the episode had never happened. "Quite against our orders, but I did turn pirate." And he collapsed with laughing again.

"Quite," agreed Norrington, staring down at Will with one eyebrow hitching toward his hairline.

* * *

Two days later when they reached the pier—this shore was pleasant with rust-gold sand and whistling pines—Will was much more himself. Norrington had asked Maccus for the particulars of the _Dutchman_'s service, and Maccus had replied with guarded formality that Norrington had thought commendable in a civilian, especially considering his own past dealings with the ship. 

They unloaded the Company men, and the sailors they'd found earlier and after, Norrington wading with the platforms himself. As he saw the first man stagger to his feet, his numb reserve broke into a true smile, and he spent the hours helping the crew and talking with the men of his former command—regretting, as he did so, how few of them he had known. Beckett's Admiral James Norrington had not been very alive.

Edward Rickby had been his first lieutenant on the _Endeavor._ Mr. Rickby, as Norrington remembered, had been engaged. As they talked, Norrington stuffed away the sight of his white limp face in the water, after the dead had drowned and he had remained alone to secure them against the waves and monsters.

They wandered up the stone road together, nodding at the guard, a knight contemporary to Arthur in a trim beard and a mail tunic with a tabard of a silver crab on a blue field. The guard held up two fingers in a gesture of peace, and Mr. Rickby spoke quietly with Norrington about his girl, Miss Christchurch, a shy creature who loved her pencils and pet birds. "It would never have worked well," he said, head bowed. "With me gone, and she alone with the other wives…I got the sense she never got on much with other women, they thought her strange. With it broken off, she'll meet some chap to keep her company by the fire, nights—" He trailed off. "How long have we been gone, Admiral? Do you know?"

"Just over a year," Norrington replied, looking down at the young man with him—Lieutenant Rickby, clever and guileless and a devoted writer of letters.

"Then perhaps she's found him already," murmured Rickby. "Perhaps this is all for the best."

Norrington frowned. "Unlikely," he said.

Rickby glared up at him. "Why say that, sir. Why now."

"Because from the short time I have known you, you have seemed a decent and good-hearted young man," said Norrington. "As for Miss Christchurch and your time at sea, you would have done more for her than most men, and now no one can know what good may have come. No, it was not for the best."

"Well, that's a fine thing to say to a dead man, now isn't it?" Rickby snapped.

Norrington stopped, resting his hand on the wall's crenellations. "You will thank me when you understand," he said. "I have something to say now to Captain Turner."

"Who?" Rickby asked, having been out of his mind during his time on the _Dutchman_.

"Charon," said Norrington, and he strode back along the stone wall, past the guard in his niche, pressing through the crowd on the stairs, and into the water, where the crew were just beginning to swim back with the last empty platform.

The dead watched him curiously. "Not coming with us, then, Admiral?" called another lieutenant.

"We will see," replied Norrington, as he followed the equally curious crew to the _Dutchman_'s ladder. The Captain was at the bow watching them, obviously puzzled. "Captain Turner," said Norrington, as Will met him at the midships rail. "I would speak with you before you cast off."

"Very well," said Will, and led him to the corner of one of the aft stairs and the aftcastle bulkhead. They faced each-other, Norrington with his hands behind his back, uncertain how to begin.

He started with curiosity. "I understand you have chosen to hinge your future happiness, and that of Miss—Mrs. Turner, on the hope that in these next years you will discover some way to outwit a powerful goddess older than Greece herself."

Will smiled nervously. "That is the idea. The pirate Brethren got the best of her once."

Norrington realized that Captain Turner was, at his core, the same young man who had sunk an axe into his chart on the morning of Miss Swann's kidnapping, despite his rugged bearing and experience of piracy and command.

"And besides, they have Elizabeth now," Will added quietly.

"Yes, if anyone has experience in using and breaking sacred bargains, it is Mrs. Turner," Norrington sniped. Will glared at him and brushed his hand over the hilt of his saber. "Come now, say it isn't true."

Will lowered his eyes, lips in a tight line. "If you have something to tell me, say it now."

Norrington caught himself swaying from foot to foot. "I recall the late Captain Davy Jones asking me a question before I died, and since I saw you I have had the strangest sense that I somehow owe _you_ an answer."

"How _did_ you die?" Will cut in.

Norrington found Bootstrap coiling a line across the deck, saw him staring, and sent him a pointed glare. "I was stabbed," said Norrington shortly, before Will could follow his glance. "Captain Turner, I can think of few things less pleasant than serving before the mast on a cursed ship for two lifetimes under the command of the man who ruined my dearest prospects of love and vocation."

"Thank you for returning to my ship to inform me," Will snapped.

"My apologies, but again, say it isn't true. But as I said, Davy Jones asked me a question, and instead of answering, as I recall, I stabbed him—with that sword," Norrington said, pointing to Will's hip.

"Do you fear death," supplied Will.

Norrington steeled himself, shut his eyes, and opened them to look the younger man respectfully in the face. "I fear nothing more than leaving my life the despicable ruin than it was. And seeing what you have the—the courage to do—"

"It was the crew's decision," said Will.

"I will serve," said Norrington, and then he winced. "If you would have me."

Will cocked his head. "You certainly made a fine recommendation for yourself, Mr. Norrington, and your eagerness was truly cheering," he said flatly.

"Of course, Captain Turner. I will take no more of your time," replied Norrington, turning to go.

Will grabbed him by the shoulder, and he spun, surprised. Will extended his hand. "Welcome to the crew."

Norrington shook it, smiling, and looked his new Captain up and down. The day was bright, the wind was fresh, the _Dutchman_, though it was beginning to mold over, had a noble, beneficent air. "I think you mad, Captain Turner. Foolhardy as ever."

Will smiled back. "Not mad. Daft, more like."

* * *

Behold the threadbare reasoning I use to resurrect our Commodore! Specious. More holes than a mosquito grate. Flimsy as a toilet-paper doily. Please don't look too close.

Stay tuned for the epilogue.


	18. Da Capo al Coda

_**Da Capo al Coda**_

Maccus was in his berth.

His bare feet stretched up comfortably above the level of his head, the sturdy worn canvas of his hammock cradled his stiff back, he was—if not dry, for not much of the ship was ever dry lately—warm enough, and he swayed steadily with the rhythm of the waves. The Captain had finally stopped his racket, and he was ready to sleep—not a necessity, but the thought seemed a delicious one this night.

Captain Turner's racket had become a fixture as much as Captain Jones' music had been, once those crates left from the _Birdie_ had all been opened, and that fireplace in the organ room finished. As Turner had explained, with heedless enthusiasm as Maccus nodded and pretended to follow, he had managed to route the airflow from the organ's water-driven bellows to flow through the small, thick-walled box he had constructed from bricks, sand, and holystones. The wind let the wood fire inside glow to a hellish golden heat, though how blowing on a fire would make it hotter was beyond Maccus' understanding.

"I have nothing suitable to temper an edge with, yet," Turner had explained over the din of his hammer on a curl of blood-glowing steel pressed against what appeared to be an iron brick, "but there is more to forge than blades." The captain would turn bits of scrap into hand tools, often, and sometimes odd little decorative eye plates, marlinespikes with ornate forged handles, and hinges. "Good hinges are difficult to forge," he had said. "There must be an easier way to secure a door."

Bootstrap had been fairly floating. "My son," he had remarked proudly, "a tradesman. Would never 'ave thought."

The piercing _tink, tink, tink, tink_ of the small hammer had ceased when the Captain had gone up to run the starboard watch. Maccus' eyes were shut, when a lilting, waltzing hum intruded on him. "More o' that fancy fiddle music, navy boy?" he growled.

A few hammocks away, Norrington stopped. "That was Purcell," he informed him. "No one does not like Purcell." And he continued humming.

"Clam up with Purcell," he snapped. "I was sleeping."

"Bugger off," said Norrington, and hummed another little scurling air.

Maccus rolled to his feet, and stomped to Norrington's hammock. "What'd ye say t'me?"

"Bugger," said Norrington, rolling his legs to the deck in a sitting position, "off." The nearby men were stirring up in their hammocks, watching. "Is this worth a fight?"

Maccus blinked, glaring at the man. Norrington had a bruised jaw from an earlier scuffle, but Ogilvey, a fighter in his own right, had been considerably more damaged, and the navy boy was taller than Maccus. On the other hand, Maccus, as first mate, could never let any man out-bully him. It was his duty to the crew.

"Who thinks Mr. Norrin'ton 'ere should stow it and give us a bit o' peace?" he demanded to the dark.

A few aye's sang out.

"Guess it is worth a fight," said Maccus, baring his teeth and steeling himself for a broken nose if he failed to blackjack Norrington on the first blow.

Norrington shrugged and settled back into his hammock, flickering his fingers over his breastbone as though playing a phantom flute, and Maccus, shaking his head, returned to his berth.

He could not sleep.

After an hour awake, he rolled from his hammock and stomped from the berths to the mess, where Pip Finn and Tom Sorrel slumped shoe-to-shoe against the hull, snoring in unison. He felt with his feet along the corner of hull and deck, and in a little bed of muck—he would have someone scrape down the room the first thing next bell—found a narrow nickel cylinder: the organ's whistle that had been rolling around for the past few months. He shook the slime out of it, earning a grunt from Tom as a glob of it hit him on the ear, and blew hard into the narrow end.

The whistle sputtered wetly for a few seconds, then shrieked. Pip and Tom woke with cries of alarm, Tom snapping his arm into a salute and shouting, "Sir, yes, sir!"

"As you were," said Maccus, glad they could not see his red face in this darkness, and he plodded from the forecastle to the relative privacy of the gun deck, where he seated himself beside a cannon, opened the gun port, and used the starlight to examine the silver pipe in his hands. He pulled his steel marlinespike from its lanyard around his neck and tapped it to the metal, and then as though watching himself in a dream, he firmly punched a small hole in the flute, and then, a finger's width away, another, and another, feeling all the while that he had done something like this before—perhaps as a boy on land. He realized how little he remembered before Davy Jones.

The holes punched, he gently smoothed the flanges of metal away, and put his lips again to the end of the pipe, playing one gentle note after another, and scraping and adjusting until the flute played clean. He ran a few scales, stumbled, and fell into a half-familiar melody, repeating an air over and over, gradually building after it, until a bold, waltzing old tune swelled in the night.

Above him, he heard a man sing softly.

We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,  
We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas,  
Until we strike soundings, da-da-la da-da-lee-da  
Da-da-dum da-dee-dum da-lee, thirty-five leagues.

Maccus played on, fingers thrilling, fluttering, the tune and the words teasing at his memory—not lost, merely peeking through the fog, and perhaps if he followed the current, he would see the shore. The tune to the verse came to him, and he began to turn verse over chorus, listening to the rising churn and harmony of half-remembered words filtering down from the deck above—by God, the whole crew must have woken, he must be mad, but still he played, and the voices above began to fill each-other in, singing of Spanish ladies, ports and lights, fleets, the sights and navigation of the living sea, drink and melancholy.

A baritone joined strong, leading through the verse.

Then we hove our ship to, the wind at due north, my boys,  
We hove our ship to, a sunk tree for to see;  
So we dropped out our launches and hauled up those flounders,  
And then we went whaling, and caught Captain's knee.

Maccus snorted and almost dropped the flute, but the tune was still rolling through the boards over his head, and he tapped his foot in time and caught along again.

We rant, and we roar, as proud _Dutchman_ sailors,  
We rant, and we roar, through all the salt seas,  
Until we sight poor souls for to haul 'em and beach 'em,  
Defying Calypso, if you give us brandy!

Maccus played until the flute began to sputter, and then in the silence while he cleaned it, someone else hummed a tune that the rest of the crew caught up, and soon he was playing along to Drunken Sailor, Dead Horse, the Oyster Girl, Haul Away, and more tunes than they knew the words to—though the men who thought themselves clever would throw in their own lines—and the hours spun by and Maccus realized that he must once have loved to play the flute.

* * *

And so the _Flying Dutchman_ had music again.

* * *

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) was an English Baroque composer I have never listened to, but I found him on Wikipedia and he was evidently quite popular. The tune that Maccus first strikes up is called "Spanish Ladies," and if you listen at www. contemplator. com/ sea/ ladies. html you will find it hauntingly familiar. I don't know if it is possible to make a recorder out of an organ whistle, but I don't see why not. The other songs are real songs you can read online, and listen to, if you don't mind the horrible synth organs and bagpipes used to play them. 

_D. C. al Coda_ is a music term that means "go back to the top and play to the end bit." Which this is. The end of what amounts to a comic-book origin story, come to think of it.

Thank-you all so much for reading.


End file.
